I recently attended a parent seminar on empathy. Here is the Cliff Notes version: empathy is feeling with someone while sympathy is feeling for someone.

Here’s one way to think about it. Sympathy is what’s on display in a funeral home. While it has a place in our human experience, it’s the short game. Empathy is what happens after a loss, when someone comes into your home, fixes you a cup of tea, and listens to your ongoing struggle. It’s the long game and results in close connection with other people.

Just the other week, I experienced the lesson in a personal way.

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Happiness is cleaning out your freezer and finding the chocolate digestives that your daughter brought you from London that you stashed behind the mixed vegetables to hide from your children.