Last year one of my clients asked me to teach empathy since he believed that the world needed more empathy. No one ever asked me to teach empathy before so I thought about it for a minute. I have been an empath all of my life, but can empathy be taught? I concluded that it can’t. Compassion can be taught; mindfulness can be taught but empathy cannot be taught, especially as one gets older.
Luckily I grew up with my father being empathic so I was around empathy growing up. Kids develop most of their personality by the age of 7.
I grew up in a predominantly white environment as one of the few African American families in town. Looking at me, most people don’t expect it, but like other African-Americans, I was exposed to racism. But I was exposed to racism in a different way than most since many people didn’t know if I was white or black.
On the school bus, I remembered one kid saying how much he hated blacks and my neighbor tried to shush him saying, “Be quiet! Khristee’s on the bus!”
To which he replied, “Who cares? She’s not black!”
To which my neighbor replied, “Yes, she is!”
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