Just because… Remembered pain

Have you ever wondered if the pain you feel for someone else is really your own remembered pain? Is it sympathy or empathy?

Once you’ve experienced the pain of loss will it only ever be your own pain that will revisit itself on you thereafter?

Is there even some way to tell the feel of pain apart when you feel overwhelmed by the emotion?

Is there even a way to tell the difference? Is sympathy only skin-deep? Is it simply pretty words from folks who don’t sincerely understand how you feel and couldn’t even if they wish they could?

Is empathy its soul-deep sister? In this harmony of sibling emotions where indifference and apathy are its opposite?

Is it all semantics in the end? Because who can truly understand another unless they seek to… Is it a question of desire?

Desire to understand the pain of another living being? Is that even possible without digging into your own soul, into the your own emotions, your own past, your own remembered pain?

Is it your own pain you feel when you try to understand? Or theirs? Can you only try but never understand unless you’ve been there?

Is it not about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes… But rather about walking it in you own shoes?

How clouded is our understanding of others by our experience of ourselves?