Imagine that we're walking through a sandy village bazaar, and we notice a crowd gathering around one of the shops. A masked merchant thrusts an item into the air, and everyone starts making offers: a life of service, non-vital limbs, acres of land, and thousands of jewels. What could be worth all this time, energy, and wealth? A golden lamp. A being of unimaginable knowledge and power lives inside that lamp: a genie. He can be freed by rubbing the lamp, and in exchange for his freedom, he's willing to grant three wishes. Wishes sit at the peak of valuable gifts. We can use them to become wealthy, beautiful, successful, and even generous. They empower us to become who we want to be. Our minds create a map that leads us from who we are to who we want to be, but genies allow us to travel to the destination in an instant. Although we may not be able to do it as fast as a genie, we can learn to grant wishes. And we have to start by developing our empathy.
The root of empathy is *pathos*, a word from Ancient Greece. It has multiple definitions that can't be separated: experience, suffering, emotion, and destiny. Our experience of suffering is intertwined with our destiny. Growth lies in overcoming our pain. Sitting on the couch all day produces bodily pains, hunger, and boredom. Hunger causes us to eat, which causes us to grow stronger. Boredom causes us to read, which causes us to grow smarter. Pathos is the unavoidable pain intertwined with our growth. Empathy is the ability to understand our pathos and map out who we are, who we want to become, and the obstacles standing in our way. After identifying the obstacles in our way, we can start gaining the knowledge and power we need to overcome them. We gain power and knowledge through trial and error, practice, and experimentation.
By overcoming obstacles, we become competent. With empathy and competence, we learn to negotiate with ourselves. We know how to exchange our time and energy to reach our goals. Being able to negotiate with ourselves leads to a good internal relationship. But no one is competent enough to do everything on their own. We depend on good external relationships to fulfill our wishes, and luckily, we can use empathy and competence to negotiate with others. Nina is a wealthy entrepreneur with no time to cook, and Nick is a phenomenal chef with no job. She would like to get fit and eat healthily, and he would like to make a steady income. By empathizing with each other's pain and exchanging competencies, Nick and Nina can negotiate a successful business arrangement. They can fulfill each other's wishes.
On a mountain of valuable gifts, wishes sit at the peak. They empower us to become who we want to be. But the ability to grant wishes is made up of three skills that we find in the genie—the greatest granter of wishes. After freeing the genie from his lamp, he asks us what we would like. He demonstrates empathy. "Genie, we'd like the ability to fly," we say. "I can do that," he replies. He snaps his fingers and gives us wings. The genie demonstrates his competence and ability to negotiate. He knows what we want, can make it happen, and will make it happen. By mastering negotiation, competence, and empathy, we can learn to grant any wish. Together, all three skills combine to form a pyramid: empathy at the base, competence in the middle, and negotiation at the top.
And since the others depend on it, empathy is the most valuable skill. Without empathy, even a genie can't make us happy. Without knowing our desired location, there's nowhere we can go that would satisfy us. And yet, even if we knew our destination and could be transported there, I can't help but believe that we would just set a new destination. Perhaps, the process of walking the path is just as important as understanding and creating it. Like baking soda mixing with vinegar, the kissing of two tectonic plates, or the collision of two heavenly bodies, me and you, we might be the process that arises under the right universal conditions. Maybe, we're like raindrops leaving the clouds and heading towards the ocean—a process between two end states. And yet, all of the beauty, joy, and freedom lies in the act of falling.
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