In English class last week, the sub had gone off on a long tangent about the difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy, the woman explained, meant you knew exactly what the other person was feeling because you’d felt it before. “I always remember it like this,” the sub had said. “Sympathy means same. Now empathy, on the other hand, means you have never experienced it, but you can imagine how it would feel.” Leah guessed no one on that field had experienced the same thing she had earlier that night. So that meant that this show of support was empathy instead of sympathy.
