The Key to Managing Your Late-Pandemic Frustrations
How to turn short-term compassion into long-term empathy
These days, I don’t have to scroll very long before coming across a long-winded rant about pandemic restrictions or a sunny vacation photo with nary a mask in sight. These are people I know, people who have shown me kindness and care through low times in my own life. Each time, the cognitive dissonance makes my head spin.
I recently came across a Twitter thread from the editor Sigrid Ellis that put words to what I’d been feeling: “Americans are really good at acute compassion, but pretty bad at chronic empathy,” the thread begins. “We, without question, haul strangers out of a raging flood, give blood, give food, give shelter. But we are lousy at legislating safe, sustainable communities, at eldercare, at accessible streets and buildings.”
We’re lousy, too, at sustaining empathy enough to let it guide our personal actions over the long term. Nick Bognar, a California-based therapist, explains it’s much easier to be compassionate in the short-term because we can usually imagine ourselves in a similar plight.
For example, it’s easy to identify with an exhausted nurse talking about how draining her days are because we’ve all been overwhelmed by circumstances outside of our control.
