Articles

"Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other. Being aware of these feelings and needs, people lose their desire to attack back because they can see the human ignorance leading to these attacks; instead, their goal becomes providing the empathic connection and education that will enable them to transcend their violence and engage in cooperative relationships."

~ Marshall B. Rosenberg, Speak Peace in a World of Conflict:...

Activist Frances Kissling embodies an openness that is uncomfortable and difficult in this political moment. It’s a challenging coincidence that we chose to air her show this week, What Is Good in the Position of the Other, when few of us feel trust in the other side. But in her decades of work at the center of our fraught conversation on abortion, Kissling says she finds hope not in the possibility of common ground or agreement, but rather in the process of coming to...

Have you ever tried to offer someone empathy only to see it bounce off of them? Sometimes it's as though your guess hits a force field. The other person responds to your empathy guess by telling their story again, analyzing, or by criticizing.

You'd like to connect to their heart and share in their experience, not just in the thoughts and opinions. At this point, you might go along politely and avoid talking to that person in the future. Or, if it is a more central relationship, you might move into your own thoughts and judgments and hear yourself say, silently or aloud, something...