Cool Empathy

 Empathy is often portrayed in popular psychology as a warm and fuzzy sort of feeling. We want to put ourselves in the shoes of someone else so we try to project onto them traits that we find desirable, such as love or sympathy. But I have found that real empathy can be cool and detached as well. It doesn't need to set up or presume a specific atmosphere, and it can even be used to teach reading and literature. Empathy does not need to be immersive or total, in the sense of trying to completely immerse ourselves in another experience like a method actor. Instead, empathy might be considered trying out different ideas or situations that another person might be experiencing, based on what they communicate to us.
  I sometimes feel that the task of empathy can be too daunting: how can we ever tell whether we have fully captured another person's experiences? In fact, this is neither possible nor especially desirable, in my opinion. Furthermore, such an experience doesn't necessarily entail a connecting experience with another person. I think that empathy needs to be approached with caution and humility, in the sense that what we think about someone else can only be a mental construction based on a mixture of one's personal experiences,education and the observations of another person. We don't have special access to another person's mind, and nor is this necessary for people to get along or live harmoniously.
    Though we cannot know another person, we can have fun exploring the lived experiences of others. I think it's important not to try to take another person's experiences as one's own or claim knowledge that is only partial or fragmentary. This kind of empathy is grounded in a sense that understanding is impermanent and partial. And this is okay, because all of experience is a constant unfolding.