Sympathy VS. Empathy

     In class, we learned the differences and the similarities between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is defined as feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's hardships. To feel bad for them, to put thought and concern into someone else's misfortune. Empathy is defined as the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. To understand what that person is going through, to think about the emotions that they must be going through. Empathy is an essential tool for historians. This is because since all of these occurrences happened in the past, none of us got to experience the actual feel of how this nation came to be. As historians, we have to use our minds, and our knowledge to try to understand and experience what happened before we came around. To try to understand and interpret our past, and why everything that happened in the past, lead to our country today.