The Lost Art of Empathy

Understanding how others are feeling is an important as understanding what they are speaking if not more so. We need empathy to connect and bond with other people. We need empathy to cultivate surface relationships into deep meaningful ones. Sadly our society today lacks empathy, it is disappearing slowly with each new generation.
Schools should be the best place to teach empathy. Our school systems today emphasize things like bullying, sexual harassment and abuse. These are all part of an integrated social education but they lack the teaching of prevention. These courses are aiming more at solutions than prevention.
My first strong experience of empathy was in the third grade. It was close to mother's day so we were all asked to write a letter to our mothers explaining how much they meant to us.
I sat across from the class tough boy, or bully as we often label them today. His name was Tike and his cloths we're always dirty, and his mannerism gruff and mean. I usually avoided him, as did most of the class but this day he taught me empathy.
I had neat printing in grade three, top of my class, so Tike walked over to my desk and in a soft quiet voice asked me if I would rewrite his Mother's day letter as his printing was not so good. Then he handed me a folded piece of paper and whispered in my ear to keep it a secret. Then he returned to his seat.
I opened the letter and began to recopy it on a new sheet of crisp white paper and as I did I cried inside. This is what it said.

Dear Mom,

It is Mother's Day again and I miss you. I am in grade three
now. When will you come home? Everyone wants you to come home.
I love you. Why won't you come home?
Happy Mother's Day.

P.S. I hope you get this letter.

Love Tike

I wept inside softly and looked to Tike, he looked at me sadly but strong. This was the first time in my life I realized not every child had a Mother at home to care for them. I asked Tike when she left, he said when he was two. He and his three brothers all lived with their Dad and he was the youngest.
I cared for Tike that day, and all the days after. I now understood him, his pain and felt his ache. I felt a new type of protection over him and need to be his friend. And so I from that day on I did what I could to protect him, and he protected me. Silently without others knowing we had a secret bond.
It was the empathy that tore down barriers, that made the bully a boy, and me a friend. Still today twenty some years later I still feel protective of him, and smile when I see him, And truly care about how he is doing.
Schools talk about bullies, and violence, they teach coping skills. We need to stop teaching and start sharing our stories. If children in the class could be given just two hours a week and be encouraged to share what pains them. To talk about the lose of a loved one, the parent with cancer, the sister with MS, perhaps then we could breed more empathy and understanding. If you know what occurs behind closed doors than you start to feel some responsibility
towards the outcome, if you know someone is sick you want to do what you can to help make them feel better. If sexual education can be taught, than we should also be teaching empathy, perhaps if there was empathy there would be no bullies, no school violence, and no sexual assault. Something to think about.