Lines That Divide US
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” These words, spoken by Aristotle, are too often ignored and the price we pay is high . When street gangs substitute for families and schoolyard insults end in stabbings it is a sure sign of a lack of empathy. Being able to empathize is a crucial ability that forms part of Emotional Quotient (EQ) and matters immensely in terms of how we do in life. Empathy has to do with knowing another person’s feelings, feeling what that person feels and responding compassionately to another’s distress.
Empathy acts as a buffer to cruelty and is a quality known to be lacking in child molesters and psychopaths. Empathy is also known to lead to acts of altruism which is known to activate emotions that are vital to the maintaining of good health.
Schools that develop emotional literacy programs, designed to help children learn to manage anger, frustration, and loneliness see lunch time fights, for example, decrease from two or three a day to almost none.
How much happier would we be, how much more successful as individuals and civil as a society, if we were more alert to the importance of Emotional Quotient?
Aristotle also wrote: “Anyone can become angry, that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and the right way — this is not easy.”
The good news is that empathy is an innate quality that can be shaped by experience. The greater your ability to empathize the greater your EQ.
Adriano
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