Meditations on God

Empathy does not always demand action. 

You can understand and even feel someone else’s pain without having to try to alleviate it. 

You cannot solve every problem that everyone experiences. 

As a matter of self-care and even self-preservation, nor should try to. 

In many cases, you actually have no right interfering with other people’s suffering. 

Additionally, for the sake of those who need you most, you have an obligation not to over-extend yourself for every tragedy, trauma, and hardship someone else experiences. 

You cannot be available for those who need you and for everyone else at the same time. 

Even if it hurts, sometimes you have to let other people suffer. 

In fact, sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to let people go through what they are going through. 

This is not always easy to do, especially as an empathetic person, but you must find or develop boundaries between the problems you can and should try to solve and those that are outside of your ability and responsibility. 

Otherwise, your whole life will be spent taking care of others while neglecting your own needs, and even the needs of the people closest to you. 

This is not a call to be selfish. 

Nor is it a call to become cold, calloused, and insensitive. 

Rather, it is a call to also have compassion for yourself and those who are in your direct care by prioritizing and directing your empathy appropriately.