Exploring Empathy

I’m 21 years old, on my semester abroad, and slowly making my way up the steps toward Sacré-Cœur on my first night in Paris. It’s dusky. The lights start to turn on throughout Paris, and from the height, the sight is literal magic. I decided to lean in fully to the tourist experience and order a crêpe aux fraises.

“Wait, does she know that you can get chocolate?!”

I hear someone frantically trying to get my attention.

“Wait, you can get chocolate! Don’t you like chocolate?”

That interaction set the foundation for one of my longest-standing, closest friendships. Her attempt to save me from me continues to echo to this day, her advice usually framed as a cautionary tale or an admonishment steeped in facts mixed with values. We share a lot of the same values as moms with young girls. It’s part of what keeps us in sync even when we can’t see each other often during a pandemic.

As we continue to move through COVID-19, being in sync with my circle becomes more and more important. From March 2020 — and I might even say from the election of 2016 — people have been visibly living their values. Whether it’s through mask compliance, Black, Blue, or All Lives Matter posts, red hats, or meme-sharing, it’s never been easier to know where everyone stands on an issue. With social media extending relationships beyond their natural cooling point (think old coworkers whom you’ve followed on social media or hometown classmates), there’s a lot of potential for peripheral judgment.

What if we’ve seen parts of these people that make us not want to continue the relationship or connection? How do you continue to connect with people who don’t share your values on things that feel very fundamental?

There’s a very real ecosystem of values  going into how we relate to others. It informs more than just our friendships, but how we shop, where we spend our money, and more. Value sharing is big business.

“Values and are molded from factors such as religious beliefs, family and friends, life experiences, mindset, education, and socialization,” according to researcher Abel Gaia. “It is exactly because of the differences in the factors that mold values that there exist differences in values.”

It’s understandable that these factors shape our values and, accordingly, our values shift as we grow, accumulating more experiences and a higher capacity for critical thinking. We’re able to devise a value system authentic and representative of our experiences and observations.

We found our values on skills we hone and reinforce by repeated experiences. By understanding how your values form, you can learn how other people formed their values. Alice Boyes, PhD, shares a very real example:

“If you grow up very privileged, then empathy might not have been a skill you particularly needed, therefore that skill might be underdeveloped for you. We often value what we’re better at and devalue what we’re worse at.”

Or valuing chocolate more than strawberries.

Back to my earlier question: how to handle interactions with those with whom we seemingly don’t share much of anything except an incidental connection?

It’s important to remember we don’t want everyone to share the same values. Debate can be healthy, and believe it or not, no single person has the perfect outlook and perfect values from which all others should be derived.

As I see it, we have three approaches:

Dissociate.
Unfriend, unfollow, whatever term applies. Even though it can be good to keep *the right* kind of varying viewpoints in your feed, if you don’t receive any positive feedback from a contact, it’s detrimental to your own mental health. Reducing cognitive dissonance in your social media — or better yet, reducing time spent on social media — can be a benefit.

Deferment.
Take the time you need to respond or choose your level of interaction. For example, is there a wedding invitation you are unsure about accepting? Send a card. Include an appropriate level of explanation if you feel it’s required. But remember, you never — and least of all, now — need to include an explanation for why you feel a certain way.

Discuss.
Save this for those closest or unavoidable to you. Even if the thought of a dissenting discussion fills you with anxiety, or angry blindness, or just reduces you to tears, engaging with alternate viewpoints is one of the most effective and poignant ways to find common ground.

To paraphrase Amanda Gorman, it’s important to try even as we tire. Living in an echo chamber has no benefit to building a better society. It’s just like crepes: life is richer when we have more to draw from.

Meghan Hatalla is a yoga and meditation instructor, writer and UX researcher. In her yoga teaching, writing and life in general, she strives for honesty and authenticity to craft an intentional life-by-design.