A Quick Cure—for Real!

A Quick Cure—For Real!

[Jesus] understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do.

Hebrews 4:15

Some people argue that empathy—the practice of putting yourself in your partner’s shoes—takes too much time and effort. We couldn’t disagree more. Empathy is the fastest way to make progress in a relationship. It saves untold time in moving past difficulties.

Think of any convoluted conversation you’ve ever had. Perhaps it involved misread motivations concerning a joke in front of friends. Or maybe it was a lack of appreciation that caused you to clam up. Whatever the problem, wouldn’t you like a way to make it immediately disappear? Wouldn’t you like a magic button that would suddenly make things better? Sure. Who wouldn’t? Well, that’s what empathy can do.

It’s quick.

Empathy does not require a long, drawn-out conversation to get things back on track. It can literally happen in an instant. For example, we recently had a conversation that became increasingly heated. It involved what to serve for a dinner party we were hosting in our home.

“You can just do enchiladas,” Les asserted. “People love those.”

“I’m not serving enchiladas,” I protested. “These people are expecting a nice dinner.”

“Well, then I don’t know what to say.” Les shrugged and left the room.

“Where are you going?” I shouted.

“I’ve got ice cream out on the counter in the kitchen,” he hollered back.

I followed him into the kitchen, and he could feel me gearing up for a hardheaded discourse on why enchiladas were not appropriate for the party and how he needed to be invested in this event as much as I was.^a

Before we made it to the softening ice cream, Les turned to me, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Help me see this from your side.”

That’s all it took. In less than a minute I told him how I had a limited amount of time to choose a menu, make the food, get the house ready, arrange for child care, prep our second-grader for a spelling test, take my mom to a doctor’s appointment, and so on.

“No wonder you’re feeling frazzled,” Les confessed. “I didn’t realize you had all that on your plate.”

That was it. In a moment’s time, Les suddenly saw my world from my perspective, and the tension melted long before his ice cream. He offered to take a few of my tasks, and we moved forward. The point is that if he hadn’t put himself in my place, our enchilada exchange would have evolved into an emotional and time-consuming upheaval that neither of us wanted.

You get the point. Nothing works faster than empathy.

The solutions all are simple—after you have arrived at them. But they’re simple only when you know already what they are.

—Robert M. Pirsig

^a 113