Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
Say it plainly when you do not know. This seems to help and I am not sure why costs you far less than confidence you cannot back up.
People trust someone who marks their own guesses. It keeps you honest with yourself too, because a claim you have labelled a hunch is one you can drop later without embarrassment. If you are the person others come to for advice, the habit matters more rather than less.
Qur’an and Sunnah
avoid making too many assumptions (Quran 49:12). The instruction is about how we hold people in mind, and the same restraint fits what we claim to know.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱجۡتَنِبُواْ كَثِيرࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعۡضَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِثۡمࣱۖ وَلَا تَجَسَّسُواْ وَلَا يَغۡتَب بَّعۡضُكُم بَعۡضًاۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمۡ أَن يَأۡكُلَ لَحۡمَ أَخِيهِ مَيۡتࣰ ا فَكَرِهۡتُمُوهُۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ تَوَّابࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
Believers, avoid making too many assumptions- some assumptions are sinful- and do not spy on one another or speak ill of people behind their backs: would any of you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother? No, you would hate it. So be mindful of God: God is ever relenting, most merciful
Qur’an 49:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of compassion education in health care found that most interventions cover only some of the domains of compassion and that they vary widely in quality. That is a field describing itself accurately rather than selling itself. It is also a fair warning against repeating any one course as though it were settled.
Sinclair S, Kondejewski J, Jaggi P, Dennett L, Roze des Ordons AL, Hack TF. (2021). What Is the State of Compassion Education? A Systematic Review of Compassion Training in Health Care.. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Marking what you do not know leaves both of you free to change your minds later.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
You cannot decide to feel closer to people. You can decide to eat with them, walk with them, sit near them and say one true thing, and the closeness tends to follow.
Find a photograph of someone caught unguarded, ashamed or frightened or relieved, and look at it for a while. Notice what happens in your chest and around your own eyes.
You can feel for the child in front of you and still keep the consequence you set. Being moved was never meant to be the thing that decides.