Theme Essay

Empathy and Interdependence

In life, I would say many people have experienced empathy and interdependence. Empathy is a way of understanding how someone is feeling rather than feeling sorry for them. It is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, knowing the situation and how they truly feel. Interdependence is relying on someone/something and having that someone/something rely on you. When another can do something that the other can’t they rely on each other to get the job done or in some cases survive. In MeneMac, I have learned and used empathy and interdependence in some of my work. An example of my work is a PSA video for media class; in this project I used both empathy and interdependence. I used empathy when I had to act in the video because I needed to make the right expression in order for the video to look real, so I put myself in the characters shoes in order to make the right expression. I used interdependence when making the video because I relied on my group member to edit the effects I didn’t know how to do and she relied on me to give her ideas on what effects to add. Without either of us we wouldn’t have been able to make the video successfully.
I have had many experiences in empathy. Whenever my friends come to me for advice it makes it easier for me when I can put myself in their shoes so that I can give them advice that can really help them out. When you know and understand the situation then it’s easier to give your friend or someone close to you the best advice you have. Empathy helps me out a lot in these social situations. If I didn’t know how to use empathy then things would probably have turned out differently with my friends and not in a good way. Another situation I have used empathy in is in Modern Hawaiian History. In our first quarter we had an essay on ancient Hawaiians right before the overthrow of Hawaii and how we felt about it. Before I wrote this essay I didn’t what to think but empathy came and it made it so much easier to write the essay because I could put myself in their shoes and understand their situation.
When I learned about interdependence I wasn’t too familiar with it because it’s not really common in my life. Usually I am the one to rely on someone even though that’s not a good thing I’m learning to work on that. I have only had a few experiences of interdependence in my life. One experience I have had was with this KC3 project, our whole group has to rely on each other in order to get work done. In each group we are broken up into pairs for different tasks such as making a video, webpage, interactivity, and PowerPoint. Each person has to have their own information on their sub-topic and everyone’s information on that sub-topic needs to be included in these projects. We all need to rely on each other with the responsibility to get the information to each pair working on the project.
These themes have helped me learn a lot in the social world. With empathy I have learned to understand people better instead of just assuming things. Empathy has helped me become more sensitive towards people. Interdependence is something that isn’t really something you can work on; it’s more of something that just happens. When you use empathy and interdependence together you can really be a benefit to others and the world. Some examples of using them together are recycling, cleaning a park, or anything that can help out our planet to keep it “green.”
In my opinion I believe that these two themes are good choices because it fits with what has been happening in the world. A lot of people are going through troubled times, we also have been having concern about our planet and how we can help to keep the world in its best condition. You might wonder how the earth and the problems with the world fit into these themes but they do. We rely on earth for oxygen and basically everything, earth needs us for carbon dioxide, to keep it clean and functioning. If we can understand what the issues are of the world then maybe things could get done to improve its conditions. If each and every person take these themes to heart then maybe our world can actually be changed one little step at a time.