A little girl under the age of 10 walks through a crowded street alone. How many will notice this and help her? Experiments based on this have shown that most people will just walk by. This is one example of the world humans live in today – a world filled with apathy. Now she is being helped and once again finds her family. Someone with empathy walked up to that little girl and brought her to her family safely. The world needs more empathy because it creates a kinder world, one with more equality, more motivation for helping good causes, and more unity.

Even though this world has a lot of apathy in it, there are those willing to show kindness. These people make the world a little bit sweeter. Take Travis Rudolph, a famous football player, for example. He and his buddies from the team went to a local elementary school. One might think that he would want to go to a child-filled table, supplied with adoring fans. Instead, Rudolph sat down across from a mentally disabled boy named Bo. What makes this even better is he didn’t even know Bo was disabled and sat down with him just because Bo was alone. “‘So I asked him could I sit down and have lunch with him,’Mr. Rudolph said in an interview with Fox and Friends on Thursday. ‘And he said, ‘Sure why not?’” (Hauser). Rudolph sat with Bo and became his friend, if only for a short time. Before he had sat down with Bo, the boy was very alone. His mother even reported that he almost never sat with anyone at lunch. This apathy separated him from other kids, but when Rudolph showed empathy, Bo was finally noticed. Sometimes showing empathy doesn’t require a lot of work at all, as seen here. All it took was a small act of kindness to raise awareness of what empathy can do for a person.

A small act can go a long way, but big ones can do just as much. Equality has always been a struggle for people, and is more problematic in some places than in others, whether for children, women, or people of another race. Vivienne Harr opened her eyes to problems that didn’t just include her, and she saw a chance to show empathy. “At age 8, she saw a photo of two Nepali boys her age who had been enslaved. She set up a lemonade stand with the goal of ending child slavery” (Morris). Harr took action on someone else’s grief, even though she didn’t know the person. Her lemonade stand seemed small at first, but it grew into something that is making a change in the children’s lives as of this moment. Take one look at the situation, and it is clear to see that Harr showed huge amounts of empathy. She spent time and money and managed to make a difference in the world. Without her, it would have been harder, if not impossible, for those enslaved children to be free. With apathy, the children slaves are in chains, and with empathy, they break free of them.

Similar to Vivienne’s reason for action, Jordan Somer was fighting for equality. Everyone has heard of Miss America and the Special Olympics. “And in 2007, at the age of 13, [Jordan] found a way to combine the two, creating the Miss Amazing pageant for girls and women with physical and mental disabilities” (Morris). Disabilities have always been a setback for people who have them. They are not treated the same, they don’t have as many friends, and they don’t get observed in the same way as “normal” kids. What is normal? A standard people have created to separate the “beautiful” from the “ugly,” the “smart” from the “dumb,” and the “popular” from the “sideshow.” These categories separate humans from banding together to achieve their true potential. Jordan Somer saw these problems and wanted to give those who are usually considered to be in the latter category, a feeling in the spotlight. In a world that is full of apathy, everyone is constantly judging each other, and especially people with disabilities. Empathy gave these girls a chance to feel special, even if the world doesn’t treat them like it. Why aren’t they treated equally? The answer is once again in the categories stated above. These perfect girls do not meet the public’s standard and are then thought of differently. Instead of excluding them, people should be welcoming them. With these disabilities, there almost always comes physical pain, so instead, the community should be coming together for these people. Showing empathy gives a glance into their world. Imagine the pain and sadness they must go through watching everyone judge them and ignore them. Empathy welcomes everyone into its open arms for comforting words and actions.

As expressed above, empathy can accomplish many things, but it is also the source of motivation to do good things. Malcolm Sutherland-Foggio was diagnosed with cancer at a very young age. Almost everyone knows the effects of cancer: nausea, coughing up blood, losing memory, the list goes on and not all apply to every type of cancer. Typically, the response to hearing this news is to be in fear or cry— but that's not at all what Malcolm wanted to do for the rest of his life. “One year later, he founded the Make Some Noise: Cure Kids Cancer Foundation, which now has chapters around the country” (Morris). Malcolm Sutherland-Foggio was experiencing a major problem in today’s world first-hand. Instead of ignoring his cancer and hoping for the best, he took it as a lesson: cancer can happen to anybody, and it will. So the problem is, how do you fix it? Malcolm didn’t let cancer hold him down, as he created an organization for kids who were worse off, or in just as much pain. Cancer is a very big problem that many people pay attention to. This causes people to show sympathy, but how many have acted upon this feeling? Empathy and sympathy are two different things, only changing slightly in definition. But this contrast can mean the difference between life and death for a child with cancer. Someone may feel bad for a person with cancer, but anyone who will act on that by donation of money or internal organs can help that child live. Empathy can save lives on a grand scale, so long as people choose to have it. Empathy has shown to be a huge part of the world’s success. Each time anyone from the above listed examples chose to show empathy, the world was made a little—if not a lot— better. Apathy doesn’t get anyone anywhere.

These four examples of brave, kindhearted people prove that not only are there good people on Earth, but also when they work to make the world better, nothing can stop them. If everyone stopped ignoring the problems at hand and tried to find a way to fix them, the world wouldn’t have nearly as many setbacks. If there are so many ways empathy can help, why aren’t there as many people helping? The answer is sometimes just laziness. Sometimes the reasoning is just that it could never happen to them, but it does, and more often every day. Empathy for others can solve problems faster than one person trying to find the solution. On top of that, with empathy, inequality is basically just a term in the past. If there are those feeling sympathy for others, and acting on that, then no one is left out. Everyone would be working to make anyone around them feel better, making everyone happier. However, this change cannot happen all at once. There needs to be people who are willing to make others more cheerful and better emotionally. Nothing can be achieved without work, but with the rewards of the end result, why not do it?

On the whole, empathy makes an improved environment for everyone. It creates many positive end results such as kinder people, an equal system, motivation for greater achievements, and brings everyone together. This world has a mix of both apathetic and empathetic people, each person creating two different outcomes. Apathy just doesn’t work for the Earth, and without it, everything can change for the better.