🔴 What is attention? 🔴
This is the total presence of me next to you. Complete clarity, where everything in me is about you: I hear you, observe your reactions, listen to your needs.

This is a low start, from which I am ready to move towards you, almost simultaneously with your request for this.

Attention is a place in my soul for the baggage of your feelings, which are difficult for you to cope with alone.

🔴 What is empathy and what is its power? 🔴
Empathy is my backing vocals in your song about feelings. These are the doors through which I enter my own experiences.

I hear what you feel, and I find similar things from the stock of feelings that I carry in myself. I begin to live in unison with you, I feel the same as you, only this is no longer about you, but about me.

My feelings may be louder than yours, and then I can no longer hear you. My feelings can deafen you, or their volume can make yours sound louder.

Empathy is not about you and what's with you, it's about me, and what woke up in response to yours. I have no place for you in sympathy, it is occupied by me.

But in sympathy, you have a feeling that you are not alone,because you see me now, who is like you. You lose the uniqueness of your misfortune, and it no longer seems to you a universal grief, shrinking to the size of "it also happens to others". This is the power of empathy.

When I listen to you, I cannot empathize or sympathize, otherwise I will occupy my space with myself, and you need it now.

When I empathize with you, I can't be attentive. After all, I'm going into my feelings and I can't hear you anymore.

Sincere and high-quality attention is expensive
This also applies to self-attention. Many of us need a sense of belonging. Someone who looks like us and sounds in unison. Someone who fills a void that there is nothing to close on their own yet. Belonging gives protection, but requires a fee in the form of loyalty and "non-removal".

And, of course, there is almost no pure sympathy or attention in life. It is almost always a mixture with a different proportion of both.