02.19.08
Give your heart an empathy workout.
There’s a lot of wisdom in this potentially life-changing article. (And I don’t say that kind of thing lightly.)
From Oprah.com:
There’s another form of cardio that works much the same way, though it affects the emotional heart rather than the one made of auricles and ventricles. This workout consists of deliberately cultivating empathy. To empathize literally means “to suffer with,” to share the pain of other beings so entirely that their agony becomes our own. I know this sounds like a terrific hobby for a masochistic moron, but hear me out.
The reason to develop a capacity for empathy, and then exercise it regularly, is that only a heart strengthened by this kind of understanding can effectively deliver the oxygen of the spirit: love.
Click here to read the rest of the article.