Knowing How Others Feel

Ted underlines that as we walk through life we must be sensitive and receptive to what others are feeling. This conscious sharing of their experience can lead to an honest understanding of their situation, permitting us to serve them more effectively. -Editor

We can think of ourselves as walking through life with others. In many situations we can enter into the feelings of an other, know much of what they are feeling, and be guided by that knowledge in response to them. A recent example for me was a phone call from a friend. She had just learned that a close friend of hers had died suddenly. I heard and felt her pain, shock, and sadness. I expressed shock and sadness and just tried to hear her feelings. I think back on that conversation as an example of really knowing how another was feeling.

How can we rightly know what others feel and how to respond to them? Genuine love of others needs to be joined with understanding, and these together need to go into actions that benefit others. One example is a parent loving a child and wanting the child to flourish. This parent can join love of the child with understanding what is going on in child’s life and growth. These together can take form in actions nurturing to the child.

Consider another situation. A person who you care about comes to you and asks for advice. Your genuine caring needs to be joined with understanding of what is going on with the person so your response can address appropriately what the person needs. This illustrates the joining of love, wisdom, and use. Love has use as its goal and brings forth use by means of wisdom (see Divine Love and Wisdom 297).

Love is the purpose, wisdom the means, and service the result. Further, service is the composite, vessel, and foundation of wisdom and love. It is such a complete composite that every bit of love and every bit of wisdom is actively present in it (see Divine Love and Wisdom 213). In the process of truly understanding how others feel, love for them works together with understanding them. Then these two can be joined in actions that serve or benefit.

There is a wide range of how well we can know another person's feelings, running from people we first meet to people we know very well. Consider a person we have just met. We can have a general sense if the person is excited and joyful or sad and distressed. We can enter into these feelings and work to respond to where the person is.

Now, think of other situations where we know the person well. With a close friend we can read more subtly expressed feelings. For example, if the person is feeling encouraged and strong or grateful and appreciative or nervous, we may be able to pick these feelings up accurately from the person’s expressions and actions.

An important time we can know how others feel and stand with them is in the face of serious loss, as when a loved one has died. After the death of our beloved daughter, I went through the most intense feelings of loss. My wife, our other two children, and other family members shared in this intense loss. In some situations I talked to a friend who I felt knew how I felt. She had lost her husband to death, and going on in the face of loss is something we had in common. These, and other conversations with other people, in which deeply felt emotions have been shared, have been very helpful to me in learning how to work through the hardship.

Since then, I have shared from my experiences and feelings relating to our daughter's death and the challenge of going on after such a great loss. Several people have come to speak with me because they felt I would understand their feelings in response to losing loved ones. Recently I have been given the opportunity to support a young person who has gone through the death of her father. Often I feel I know how she is feeling and knowing helps me to respond.

A large part of knowing how others feel is knowing their joys and their sufferings. Loving others involves feeling the joy of others as joy in ourselves (see Divine Love and Wisdom 47). In this we do not project ourselves on the other person but receive the other person and his or her joy. Part of loving others, or charity, is being compassionate toward others in their suffering as we are toward ourselves (see Arcana Coelestia 351). As part of loving we feel the sufferings of others as well as their joys.

We are able to know what others feel through attentiveness to them and their feelings. To free ourselves up to being attuned or attentive to what others are feeling we need to resist being caught up in ourselves. We can be in touch with our feelings without being driven by them. Our feelings then can be a resource we can draw on for understanding others. With attentiveness we observe and notice as we see and hear others. In this way we can be with others and respond to them beneficially. For example, if someone close to us is in a challenging situation and speaks of having no choice, we can enter into that feeling of having no choice about a situation. We can call up bad situations not of our choosing which we have faced. If the person feels she is trying her best, despite the difficulties, we can enter into that feeling and know how she feels.

We can grow in being attentive to others, understanding of others, and responsive to others. As we do, we come to love others better and more fully. A very big part of loving others is knowing how they feel and responding to their feelings. We can continually learn and do better in this as we walk through life alongside each other.

Rev. Dr. Ted Klein

Ted is Senior Pastor at the Church on the Hill (Swedenborgian) in Boston, MA. He also teaches Philosophy part time at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Ted's family includes his wife Mary Kay, two surviving children, three grandchildren, and many more. Important to him along with family and work are friends, being outside with nature, and music and art.

Comments

[Ropemaker]

Hi Dr. Klein,
I like this discussion of genuine love. A very good balance to the article I wrote in December on the topic. It is so important to remember to listen to others. Love isn't love if it doesn't listen. Without listening we can't see the differences in other human beings and value them for who they are. Love without listening is only ourselves in other human beings. I like the idea of misguided love projecting our needs on other people. I think that is where we all start, but our love is tempered and formed by the differences in others around us. One thing that I also think is important about loving others is searching for the Lord in them.

Charity 85-87
"A person is the neighbor in accordance with the nature of the good he has from the Lord… So each person is the neighbor in accordance with the nature of the love he has from the Lord.”

This means we look for those things that a person really embodies about the Lord and nurture and love those things. I think this also means we can be discerning about the expressed needs of others whether they are positive or negative. Codependency can develop if we serve all other peoples expressed needs without being discerning about them.

Overall a very good article. Thanks Dr. Klein,
Ropemaker

[Ted Klein]

I appreciate the comments from Ropemaker.

I feel listening is a foundation always for caring and love of another. Listening is a kind of discipline, a practice. We can learn to be more and more attuned and attentive.

Love and caring are truly different from projecting onto another, more it is receiving another. But this doesn't mean, for example, always giving what is asked for. Discernment is needed.

Lots of prayer is needed! That can go with seeking to be in touch with God's working with others and ourselves. That search can help us avoid some traps of misguided caring, such as presuming we know what is best on one side or enabling on another.

Its a learning process each day!