Have you ever heard the idiom, “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”?  It means that we should first imagine what it is like to be someone else, to experience life from their perspective, before we pass judgment.  It is a call to be empathetic.

Well, it turns out that memorization is good, because it requires just that.  Dr. Bauerlein explains:

“[W]hen a sixteen-year-old learns Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ by heart, “[it] forces [him] to get inside the Greek’s head, to imagine his experience and longing, to figure his motives. It’s hard to memorize lines spoken by a character without becoming that character, and that identification opens the personality [ ] to what psychologists call cognitive empathy, which is not the same as sympathy. Sympathy calls for a moral affirmation of the other person; cognitive empathy doesn’t. It is an act of imagination in which one recreates the mental life of another inside oneself, and it happens even when [you] abhor[ ] the character. You might despise or fear what that character intends, but you must nevertheless recognize and recreate it. Richard III is a murderous villain, but Shakespeare draws us into his mind and heart, and memorizing his words intensifies our acquaintance.” (Emphases added).

When we memorize what someone else has said or written, we become a little less self-centered; we get a glimpse of the world through their eyes; we get the opportunity to walk a mile in someone else’s words.

Have a wonderful day.