Empathy and love are inseparable. Both lead to healing and clarity.
We all know the sound of empathy and love. Like love, empathy speaks in low tones, like a late-night DJ on a jazz station. Empathy. Is. Slow. It doesn’t rush. It allows people to take back their words and say it again better. There is space for reflection between words and ideas.
In Corinthians 13, the Bible describes love (sometimes translated as charity), but it may as well be describing empathy, which begets love. This is one of my favorite bible passages. According to this passage, love:
Is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity,
But rejoiceth in the truth.
Beareth all things,
Believeth all things,
Hopeth all things,
Endureth all things.
In this version, love is humble, patient, truthful, enduring, and hopeful, everything that empathy is. If empathy is a form of gratitude, is it also a form of love? I think so.
This verse also acknowledges the essential mystery at the heart of empathy and indeed love itself. In the next verse, it says,
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
The hope is that love, or empathy, will remove the barriers that prevent us from seeing another fully, face to face, and that our effort to know someone will lead them to know us as well.
Call it by any other name, empathy or charity or love, and it is the same. Empathy is essentially an act of love that leads to clarity, healing, and understanding.
This post is part of my Gratitude Project 2025: The Magic of Empathy — a 30-day exploration of empathy and gratitude. Visit the hub to follow along or catch up on past reflections.
If you’d like to explore the science behind gratitude, visit the Greater Good Science Center’s Gratitude Resources.
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