Believe it or not, we have all the ability to truly understand others without the need to experience the same experiences that others endure.
Observing the results of other individuals is enough for many to determine whether or not they would want to feel and be in the same or similar situations.
The secret to understanding others without having to undergo living out the details of their experiences isn’t some extensive list of things that we must learn and practice in order to achieve understanding on levels that can actually felt.
Our imagination truly runs wild and is truly something of the extraordinary. It is what connects us together as human beings, rewarding us the ability to understand, feel, and empathize with others, almost, if not all the way, in a telepathic sense. That is, if we have the ability to feel emotions and they aren’t numbed out.
Why is it that most people cringe, for instance, while watching a movie with a scene that shows explicit details of someone falling from the top of a skyscraper until impact of them hitting the ground? Some even turn their heads and cringe right before contact with the ground occurs. Obviously, it hasn’t been experienced by the movie watchers otherwise they wouldn’t be alive watching the movie.
This would be due to our natural ability to resonate feelings amongst each other. It doesn’t have to be a special bond in place or anything like that. It all comes down to one thing, and that’s whether or not we allow our imagination process traumatic feelings and traumatizing pain of others.
Some people limit their own ability of understanding and knowing the feelings of others to only if they’ve experienced the same similar things. We humans want to protect ourselves at all times and at all costs. We don’t like the idea of bad things happening to us. Therefore, when we’re hearing about tragedy of another individual, we tend to say that we can’t imagine what the other is going through or that we can’t imagine the terrible pain that the other is enduring.
Truth is, we very well CAN imagine. However, we create a barrier to block our imagination from allowing feelings to cross over as a protection mechanism. We do our best to avoid thinking about the worst things in the worst ways that could happen to us or our loved ones and our friends.
As humans, we don’t mean to be insensitive towards others, by simply not caring to willingly imagine ourselves suffering intensive pain that others may be feeling because we process it as hurt and we deem hurt as harmful.
Ultimately, we all have the ability to see the world through the eyes of others. When we choose to restrict that ability is when we can only relate based on our own experiences.
I agree with you.