Indulgence

A year ago, Yihui’s post Excessive Empathy struck a deep chord with me, and the feeling has only grown stronger since.

Perhaps it’s genetic (my parents are the same way, and so is my three-month-old daughter) — there’s an impatient, hot-tempered side to my personality, and I’m extremely sensitive (or, to put it positively, perceptive). When something bothers me, I can feel every organ in my body clench up. At the same time, I have an intense sense of empathy. Because I feel other people’s feelings so strongly, at work I always push myself to help others, and push myself to do my work as well as I can, so as not to cause trouble for anyone else.

I naively assumed:

1. You patiently explain things, mentor others, and build all sorts of tools to help them ↩️
2. Your skills keep improving, and so do theirs ↩️
3. You solve problems faster, and they can now solve problems on their own ↩️
4. You have more time to focus on what truly matters 😃

The reality:

1. You patiently explain things, mentor others, and build all sorts of tools to help them ↩️
2. Your skills keep improving, and they notice you’re easy-going, capable, and getting faster ↩️
3. You solve problems faster, but you have more on your plate, and more people coming to you ↩️
4. Endless trivial tasks devour all your energy and time 😱

People are inherently lazy — few can keep learning and growing. For many, a job is just a job, something to get through — why bother figuring it out yourself when you can just ask someone else? That “indulgence” and “unnecessary sense of responsibility” keeps driving you to shoulder burdens that were never yours to carry. In the end, other than having trained yourself, does it really mean much?

A few years ago I cited an article called Daddy, Why Don’t You Ever Laugh¹ — it’s about the devastating consequences of extreme empathy. He was a truly good person, and at the same time an utterly miserable one.

Of course, thanks to that hard-to-hide “impatient and hot-tempered” side of me, I haven’t become quite that “utterly miserable.” But reading it again, I can’t help seeing my own shadow in there.