LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The death of empathy

Empathy enters this world with most individuals at birth. Studies have shown that babies as young as 9 months innately demonstrate empathy. It is the ability to put yourself in others shoes and sympathize with their suffering.

Empathy allows you to identify and understand the panic and stress of those fleeing wars, crimes and persecution yearning to give their kids a better chance in life. Empathy helps you to realize the worries of people who are burdened by illnesses and the inability to afford treatments. Empathy makes you incredibly sad for those whose lives have been extinguished in mass shootings while just doing everyday things and the devastation to their families who have been left behind. Empathy would spur you to want to do everything possible to correct this injustice. Empathy would make you cringe when a president uses the murder of a baby’s parents as a photo op while he poses with a smile and thumbs up.

The death of empathy seems imminent in today’s world. There is nothing that will replace it because it will be buried too deep.

Donna Gadbaw Mitchell

Brighton

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