How to keep empathy alive?

Question: I find it so hard to keep my empathy levels up when everybody and everything around me just feels so negative and hostile. I know this is all part of the world I live in. Trying to escape negativity is like trying to escape out of a black hole. I have glimpses where I feel utter rage, contempt, anger; then I'll feel the exact opposite—pure joy, bliss, happiness and love. It's sad when the world loses empathy. That means more people are losing faith, losing hope, losing a reason to believe in humans being good. But I do my best. I try my best.

Answer:

Empathy asks a lot of us. It requires that we stay open. And the more attuned you are, or the more sensitive to injustice, disconnection, and the pain of others, the more exhausting it can feel to keep showing up with compassion.

But here’s something to note, something I certainly need to hear myself: Empathy doesn’t mean emotional self-erasure. It doesn’t mean you have to feel joyful in order to offer kindness.

Still, you deserve more than performative empathy. You deserve spaces where your own grief and frustration are allowed to breathe, and where you don’t have to be the light all the time.

We live in systems that often reward cruelty and punish tenderness. But your refusal to shut down entirely, even when it feels futile, is a radical act. Not because it fixes everything, but because it keeps something essential alive: faith in our shared humanity.

So rest when you need to and let the rage have a voice sometimes. And trust that small, honest gestures still ripple outward.