How Far You Go.

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
George Washington Carver
As I strive to grasp growth and facilitate change in my life the one universal truth that has flowed through it is empathy. When I learned to see each situation from all the angles possible I also learned to problem solve without intentionally causing pain to those around me.
It isn't nearly as easy as you may think. Empathy, or:
Noun
"the ability to sense and understand someone else's feelings as if they were one's own." is much more than just figuring how what happens makes someone else feel. You must spiritually understand it's consequences to that other persons soul.
I have tried to reach in and truly see another positioning and to find some way to have that person verbalize or help me understand.
I am not the easiest person to figure out. The battles I have waged within my own heart can only be understood by others if I have made every effort to under their heart.
So what am I on about.
Finding peace in someone else's joy, happiness, sadness, fear. Whatever you do when you reach out beyond yourself you can most honestly find the answers that you have been waiting and longing for yourself.
When you lack this, you never really truly connect to reality. Empathy grows brighter and easier with age but heartache and pain can stop you ever trying. When you stop trying to understand others you lose the ability to ever really understand yourself.
I have found some solace is this truth.
I tend, when things get very difficult, to cave. I am learning boundaries and sharing in a much more appropriate way. I don't justify my life to anyone except my Lord, and then, it's not as much justifying as it is just explaining and having the faith he understands.
I think he does.
The greatest task for me is in the understanding that what others think of me, especially those who do not take the time to find empathy, doesn't and shouldn't affect me or my self esteem. I am getting there, it will just take time.