Courageous Empathy

Because the Globe is Our Neighborhood

I still remember what it felt like to dread walking into school.

When I was in the ninth grade, three students bullied and taunted me about my weight. The taunting became so relentless that I began skipping school, especially the class where I would see those three students. My absences almost caused me to fail the ninth grade.

At fourteen years old, I did not have the language to describe what I was experiencing. I simply knew what it felt like to question whether I mattered. I knew what it felt like to want to be smaller in hopes of escaping cruel remarks.

Looking back, I realize those experiences taught me one of the most important lessons of my life:  Whenever we do not recognize another person’s humanity, injustice begins to take root. I did not know then that one day the frightened girl trying to avoid one classroom and three students would spend her life welcoming people in a much larger neighborhood.

Although I could not name it at the time, those experiences planted questions that have since grown. What does it mean to truly see another human being? Why do some people instinctively protect another person’s dignity while others denigrate it? How do ordinary people become extraordinarily compassionate? Those questions eventually persuaded me of what is now a core belief. Courageous empathy is one of humanity’s greatest needs.

Courageous empathy is love in motion. It is the willingness to allow another person’s humanity to interrupt our comfort, change our perspective, enlarge our moral imagination, and move us toward compassionate action. Love that never moves beyond sentiment may comfort our conscience but it cannot transform our communities.

Embracing this has become increasingly relevant for me because I carry a deep and persistent concern for humanity. It follows me into my prayers, my writing, my work, my conversations, and my moments of reflection. My concern is not only that violence, hatred, and injustice continue to exist. Human history has always borne witness to humanity’s capacity for cruelty. My concern is that we may be becoming immune to it.

Every grieving parent, every child buried beneath rubble, every family displaced by war, every neighborhood marked by poverty, and every person targeted because of race, religion, nationality, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or immigration status presents us with a choice. We can allow our hearts to harden, or we can allow them to come fully alive so that we realize our capacity to be humane.

We are living far below our capacity to be humane. We have developed remarkable knowledge and extraordinary technology. We communicate across continents in seconds. We solve problems that earlier generations could scarcely imagine. Yet our moral development is stagnated by a quest for power and selective significance that eclipses care for each other. We still rationalize cruelty. We still normalize exclusion. We still help and are complicit in systems that communicate to some people that their lives matter less than others. We have become increasingly sophisticated in many ways while staying painfully underdeveloped in one of the qualities that matters most. Among the defining moral crises of our time is our failure to seek our potential for developing as a global network of humane human beings.

Even with these concerns, despair is not my ultimate destination. Hope continues to call me toward a different vision of humanity. I believe humanity can recover its capacity to be humane. I believe our hearts can become larger than our fears. I believe our moral imagination can grow wider than the boundaries we have inherited. I believe we can learn to see one another as neighbors whose lives are bound together.

My understanding of what it means to neighbor shifted in unexpected ways in 2000 when I joined an Atlanta-based AmeriCorps program directed by Mr. Gary Turner. I did not realize then that I was meeting someone who would permanently influence the way I viewed both leadership and humanity. Mr. Turner, who recently died but left liberating lessons behind, challenged me to think “globally and comprehensively.”

At first, I understood those words as practical guidance for serving communities well. Over time, I came to understand that they described a way of seeing the world. They invited me to recognize that no person’s suffering exists in isolation and that no act of compassion exists in isolation either.

Thinking globally and comprehensively reshaped my perspective on pressing issues. Poverty is never only about income. Violence is never only about crime. Educational disparities are never only about schools. Every challenge intersects with another because every human life connects to countless others. Every public decision eventually reaches a family. Every policy eventually shapes a child’s future. Every act of indifference eventually becomes someone’s burden.

Thinking globally and comprehensively also elevated my moral imagination. Moral imagination enables us to envision the world not merely as it is but as it can be. It refuses to believe that injustice is inevitable because it has endured for generations.

Moral imagination allows us to envision schools where every child knows they belong, communities where differences are not feared, institutions where dignity is protected instead of negotiated, and societies where love shapes both public policy and personal relationships. Without moral imagination, we learn to manage injustice. With moral imagination, we begin creating a different future.

As my moral imagination grew, so did my appreciation for people whose lives embodied courageous empathy. Among the most influential in my life is Marian Wright Edelman. Long before I met her, her work challenged me to think more deeply about our moral responsibilities to each other, especially to our children. She has often implored us to remember that every child deserves to be safe, healthy, educated, and beloved. Children are not someone else’s responsibility. The condition of any society is revealed by how faithfully it protects those who have the least power.

Marian Wright Edelman’s words and work also taught me that courageous empathy is not measured by the intensity of our emotions. It is measured by the consistency of our commitments. Compassion that appears only when a tragedy captures public attention cannot sustain justice. Courageous empathy perseveres. It continues showing up when cameras leave, when progress feels painfully slow, and when hope requires extraordinary discipline. Her life reminds me that every child is worthy of dignity, opportunity, and love simply because they are human.

That same conviction lived in the witness of Viola Liuzzo. Her story shows that courageous empathy crosses boundaries many people never try to cross. She was not compelled by obligation or convenience. She was compelled by love.

Viola Liuzzo recognized that another person’s struggle for dignity had become her own struggle. Rather than remaining comfortably distant, she placed herself alongside people seeking justice, fully aware that doing so carried enormous risk. Her life reminds me that courageous empathy is never content to admire courage from a distance. It moves toward those whose humanity is being denied. Courageous empathy stretches us beyond the limits of our convenience and invites us into a grand universe of love. Our concept of neighboring then becomes much larger.

The globe is our neighborhood. This is the mantra for Our Neighbor’s House, the church that I pastor. And it clarifies that neighboring is not about proximity. People I will never meet have inherent dignity. Children whose names I will never know deserve safety. Every family displaced by violence deserves peace. Every person who experiences discrimination deserves belonging.

I cannot transform the entire world by myself. Neither can you. But every act of courageous empathy reveals what is possible for humanity. Every act helps move us into greater alignment with love. Every act of courageous empathy galvanizes us for sustained heart and cultural transformation.

Sometimes I think about the fourteen-year-old girl who dreaded walking into school because she feared another day of ridicule. I wish I could sit beside her for a while. I would tell her that she is enough. I would tell her that her worth could never be determined by the opinions of those who mocked her.

I would tell her that the pain she carried would one day deepen, rather than diminish, her compassion and spirit. I would tell her that the wounds she could not comprehend then would eventually intensify her calling to help others know they are seen, valued, and loved.

This invitation is before all of us. We cannot rewrite our past but we can power a better future. We can refuse to contribute to another person’s suffering. We can commit to work that prevents and dismantles injustice. We can decide what kind of neighbors we will be and what kind of world our lives will help create. We can love more expansively than we did yesterday.

Because the globe is our neighborhood. May we recover our capacity to be humane. May we choose courageous empathy.

 

Vonnetta L. West is a pastor, human rights advocate, writer, and convener known for advancing a culture of neighborliness and justice through initiatives such as the Neighbor Up Summit and through the myriad of learning experiences she curates. She is a U.S.-based nonviolence educator and strategist recognized for her work helping individuals and communities move from dehumanization and distrust toward connection, compassion, and collective responsibility. Vonnetta is a Senior Nonviolence Trainer and Instructor with The King Center in Atlanta.

 

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