Description

Tulips

A Sympathy card featuring a bunch of pink tulips and text ‘With Deepest Sympathy’

The word ‘sympathy’ comes from the Latin meaning a sense of fellow feeling and community. It has been said that one can feel sympathy by recognising the feelings another person has as feelings within oneself. That is, it is not necessary to have experienced the same events in order to feel them.

It has also been said that one can only feel empathy (as opposed to sympathy) when one has experienced what the other person is going through.

In other words, empathy depends on the ability to project one’s personality into the other person, and this cannot be fully done unless one actually knows what the other person is experiencing.

Perhaps that is why we understand that there is a gulf between us and the person suffering. It is a gulf we try to reach across with words of sympathy.

SKU: C0173