Empathy empathy empathy...I have always been a fan. I always tell people that it is better to be empathetic about something than sympathetic.
Sympathy will only make you feign fake feelings towards the travils of others but when you become empathetic, you have genuine feelings towards the situation of the person.
The only way to be empathetic from my own point of view is when you have walked in that person's shoes. There's no way you can actually feel what someone is feeling if the exact same thing hasn't happened to you. You can't just imaginarily put yourself in the persons shoes, doesn't work that way. A person who has never been involved in an accident can never know how it feels to be traumatised by an accident experience and so even when he feels sorry for you...it can never be as genuine as someone who has experienced it first hand before.
Yet when one realizes this, they can offer empathy with an open heart. And even though they cannot understand, the person feel the genuine nature of the act itself, and that is what comforts their pain...