Empathy vs Sympathy

Em.pa.thy
noun
The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.


Sym.pa.thy
noun
Feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.


A recent event on Twitter, with regards to suicide brought about the compassionate side of people where suddenly regardless of whether one knows the person personally or not, they are all lending a hand to help find said person and stop her from attempting anything foolish.


And then of course you have the other side of the fence who accused her of being all attention grabbing, being selfish for not cherishing life when some out there are struggling to just live and I guess what irks me the most is the part when people go all about their own personal experiences route.


How one chooses to lead one's life, is beyond our control. True.
If one chooses to end living, is beyond our control. True.
But if one chooses to end living then tell me about it, then it is within control.


Many questioned her intentions in doing what she did. I say it is of no fault of hers that she did what she did apart from some minor inconveniences to some of our lives. However, the bigger question here is, whatever happened to human empathy? No doubt it is her choice, her life. But here we have people who don't even know her personally writing her off, giving up on her and condemning her. 


So what if you've been through the route? You, then of all people, should know how hard the struggle is like. So what if you're a "personality" who's seen and experienced suicide of loved ones? You, then of all people, should know how much it hurts for the people around her if that happened.


What she needs, is not your sympathy. What she needs, is some empathy. Can we, as human beings, at least give that to her? For humanity's sake? Please.

Suicide

I’ve been meaning to write something on this for the longest time but I guess with the news of a recent passing of someone, this couldn’t come at a better time.

Recently, I came across a Facebook page called “In Loving Memory of (insert name here)”. When I first discovered the page, there were about 400 people in the group. I got pretty intrigued by who she was and how she died. The first thing that came to mind was that she had an illness like cancer. Reading the testimonials of her close friends and boyfriend made me feel that yes, she was someone beautiful who must have made an impact on people’s life. Delving further to find out the real cause of her death, I came across another site and when I read about how she really died, I was stunned. She died through suicide.

What drove her to that point, has been left for the public to speculate. But one thing’s for sure, she was a troubled individual whose best option was to end it all. Death is the ultimate journey of life, but suicide is a premature end to life. When a suicide happens, it is sudden and most of the time unexpected. Family members will be questioning themselves as to why the victim did it and they will retrace the steps to the past few days to see if they’ve left out any signs of breaking. Most of the time, when family members do this, they do manage to piece things together and somehow everything makes sense.

For the survivors, coping with suicide is a lifelong struggle. The scars will always be there and they would be always blaming themselves for whatever that has happened. Even though if it was no fault of theirs, they would still be blaming themselves on how they did not notice signs of the breakdown and questioning the “what-ifs”.

The most clichéd statement of all time is that “No problem is too big for us, and there is a solution to every problem.” And up till this day, I still believe this statement holds true. Sometimes as humans, we tend to bottle our feelings up, afraid of letting others in because we are afraid of being judged at. That’s when our mind goes wild and we get all confused. Sometimes all we really need is to talk it out.

And talk is what we can choose to do. Find someone whom you feel comfortable with and talk it out. Someone whom you can feel vulnerable with. Someone who won’t depose that trust. When push comes to shove, and if you really can’t find someone to talk to, there’s always the helpline which are being managed by certain organizations around Singapore – namely ComCare Call (1800-222-0000), Samaritans of Singapore (1800-221-4444). These organizations are run by qualified individuals and they practice anonymity. So there are options, will you choose to take it?

To the family of the demised individual, my condolences go out to you. Please be strong for each other and know that all hopes not lost. There is life after death, quite literally. Your life, has to go on.