In the second chapter of Senator Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, he talks about the sense of empathy that he has worked to instill in his values and character as a Senator and Presidential candidate for the 2008 elections.

Emapthy, according to Wiki, is commonly defined as one’s ability to recognize, perceive and directly feel the emotion of another. Obama identifies this in the late Senator Paul Simon and says it is at the heart of his moral code. The idea is simple: see everything as if you were standing in the other person’s shoes or looking through their eyes. Do not judge. Do not use words you do not understand. And do not simply give sympathy or charity.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that draws me closer to Obama and why I like him as a politician and am backing him to enter the White House next year.

Obama says he learnt about empathy from his mother. “She disdained any kind of cruelty or thoughtlessness or abuse of power […] Whenever she saw even a hint of such behavior in me she would look me square in the eyes and ask, ‘How do you think that would make you feel?’ “

Upon reading this in the book, it made clear a personal connection in my life and showed me how I too had grown. For years when I was younger I would think to myself why my father would more than encourage us to focus on education and continuously keep an eye on our studies. I knew that he didn’t manage to pass a set of crucial exams at one point in his life. I would not understand and with a certain talent for rhetoric as well as an absolute certainty about the merits of my own views, I wouldn’t budge in my steps.

As always, there is three sides to every story and over the last few years, it has become clear to me why he may be doing what he is, if anything. It has helped and only in hindsight do I know this, and I know how much he wants to be succesful in what we do. Not only do I understand, but I also appreciate all that he has done.

As Obama says in his book, “there’s nothing extraordinary about such an awakening, of course: in one form of another it is what we all must go through it if we are to grow up.”

So the powerful question to remember and use as a guidepost for all aspects of our life is “How would that make you feel?”. As individuals, partners and as a country on the whole, we need to ask this question more.

If Bush asked himself this, would the decision of whether to go to war or not be easier to make? Or at least if he still went to war, what about the decision of whether to keep troops there or bring them back?

What about those millions of parents with children in poverty? How would it feel if they were your children? Those that are chronically ill, unable to afford education and have no clean water to drink?

We say we believe in equal opportunity but stray away from those millions in languish and no employment. As leaders of our country and our own lives, we need a far stronger sense of empathy. When we are called to be more empathic, “we are all forced beyond our limited vision” as Obama says.

Remember the powerful question, “How would that make you feel?”

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