Instant Empathy

Instant Empathy

Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. . . . Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep.

Romans 12:9, 15

Have you ever had your luggage lost? What a frustration that is! Even if you’ve experienced waiting in increasing anxiety for your luggage to wind its way past you on the carousel, it’s because you can easily imagine how big a problem lost luggage can be for a passenger. Well, in the 1930s, lost luggage was a big problem for an entire airline: American Airways, which later became American Airlines. Passenger complaints kept coming even after the company tried their best to get their station managers to overcome the problem. But the problem persisted.

Finally, LaMotte Cohn, general manager of the airline at the time, came up with an idea. Cohn set up a meeting at the airline’s corporate headquarters that every station manager across the country was asked to attend. Then he made sure that every manager’s luggage was lost in transit.

The result? You guessed it: the airline suddenly had a huge leap of progress in curtailing the problem of lost luggage. Because the airline’s personnel instantly saw the problem from the customer’s point of view, they were suddenly more motivated to solve that problem.

This true problem-solving story is a great model for solving certain problems in relationships. When you are able to clearly see any situation from another’s point of view, when you can experience it like he or she does, you instantly take a different approach to it. We titled this day’s thoughts “Instant Empathy,” and we know that the word “instant” carries a strong promise—but it’s true. Should we hedge our bets by aiming for “almost instant” empathy? We don’t think so. Empathy can actually change everything in a moment. The moment you see a predicament from your spouse’s angle, once you have put yourself thoroughly in his or her shoes, you change—that very instant.

Once that happens, just like the station managers for American Airways, you won’t have to be goaded and pressured to make changes. You’ll make the changes without further prodding because you feel the need for change that the other feels. That’s the promise of instant empathy. Take a few minutes to think about a problem, large or small, that has plagued your marriage. Is there some way you can try to look at the problem from another angle—the one from which your spouse is looking at it? Look at it that way for a while. Then make a change.

True contentment comes with empathy.

—Tim Finn