While watching the bloopers of an episode of Roseanne, the only television show I ever watch, I found myself laughing with the actors over seemingly nothing. After noticing this, I was overcome with the most poignant emotion. I was sharing emotions with the specter of a fit of laughter from many years ago, thousands of miles away.
Only the impermeability of human empathy could bridge such a large gap. Empathy is most sublime emotion not because it so romanticized, but to the fact that empathy is the emotion that comes to our rescue whenever we are in trouble—in fact, the romanticization is probably due to this. Whenever we toil, and its end is brought about by the assistance of another, we remember the compassion showed to us and, of course, do so fondly. There cannot be compassion without empathy, so we are latently reminded of compassion previously shown to us when experiencing “severe empathy.”
(Empathy making humans different from most other animals has already been discussed. At just about everywhere.)
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