Stories Matter: They teach us to feel empathy, to walk in another’s shoes. By Jeoyun Jang.
Stories are a description of an event or something that happened to someone. They teach us to feel empathy, and to walk in another’s shoes. Whether it is through a book or a conversation, they allow us to comprehend from someone else’s perspective. Our minds open up to different experiences and realizations of other people and also how they think or feel. Once we are engaged in a story, we are able to step out of our own world and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. We all have different perspectives which form the meaning of our stories.
Personally, I would say that empathy is one of the most important skills we will ever need as we go through our lives. It allows us to understand and share the same feelings that others feel. Having an opportunity to empathize with a person is a great way to learn from another person’s experience. Someone’s story can either be miserable or exciting, but whatever their story includes, it is our duty to simply connect to whoever that might be. Therefore, different stories help us empathize with other people as we understand their point of view.
Feeling empathy for someone eventually leads to walking in another person’s shoes. In fact, they can sometimes occur at the same time. For example, a quote from To Kill A Mockingbird states, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” In my opinion, this quote best delineates the topic of this essay and how it can be approached by a person. It explains that we can never understand a person unless we view things from their perspective, or in other words, when we are “walking in their shoes.”
Everyone has their own stories. Through people’s stories, we are able to think and consider things in a way that we have never done before. Once we are engaged in a story, we are able to empathize and put ourselves in another’s shoes. This is exactly why stories are indispensable to us, it gives us a chance to connect with others. Stories matter as they teach us to feel empathy, to walk in another’s shoes.