At our Parents' Small Group - we had a whole discussion on "What is empathy?"
"To understand...."
"To wear one's shoes...."
"To identify...."
"To not judge..."
I piped up (cuz that's what I do...) and said, "Sympathy... is understanding what someone is going through because you've experienced a similar event. Whereas Empathy... is identifying and validating what someone is going through... but you can't truly understand it." And my example was Menstrual Pains. That lauched a whole discussion on kidney stones... and gender... and generation.
Modern society and contemporary psychologists have hopped on this hot take bandwagon and branded sympathy with a scarlett letter of being a hand-wave, robotic response. Whereas empathy... is trying to understand, to walk that mile, to be at the level of. At the end of the day... does it really matter? Not really. I'm just easily annoyed and like to be that gum under a desk.
