Sympathetic Imagination

What is sympathetic imagination? To me, it is to imagine yourself in another's shoes and see how it would feel if it were you. To me, it is to "secure a momentary but complete identification with it" (Anthology 404). What does this mean? To me it means to become one with the other. It is to be that person and feel his or her pain, to his or her sadness, his or her anger, and etc. "By actually entering into the object... [you learn to] take part in its existence" and learn to develop the feeling of sympathy. How might I know such a deep emotion you may ask. It's because I for one have been through pain, everyone has. If you haven't yet, you haven't lived life to its fullest yet. It isn't all bad in my point of view though. One can learn from its experiences. One can become wiser and much more sophisticated after such experiences. Just like the image below quoted by Mr. Koichi Tohei, we should "become one with the Universe." That is what I believe everyone should do to be able to display sympathetic imagination. Not being able to complete this objective would make you emotionless.

In The Odyssey by Rick Bass, he wrote about how the main character "stopped and backed the truck up"  on he road when he saw Ann in the mirror (Anthology 421). The reason I believe why he did what he did wasn't because of what Ann thought he was, "a do-gooder" (Anthology 421). No, that is not the reason. The reason I believe he did what he did was because he developed sympathetic imagination. He mostly imagined himself in Ann's position. Maybe he asked himself, "What if that were me on the road with no body to care for me?" What he did wasn't because he was a do-gooder. It was because he  developed the emotion sympathy. You might ask why would I think like this? What is going through my head? I know because I have done the same as he have before. I've seen many animals in my lifetime and I believe there is going to be many more to come, but before I ramble on, I want to get to the point I'm trying to express. My first pet compared to the story was a little bit different. Mine was a cat instead of a dog, but I got her the same way; I got her by picking her up in the streets. Soon enough, the both of us became the closest of all friends.

Citations:

The Anthology

Images:

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