Based on experiences from field and museum work, the article draws attention, from an emotional as well as ethical viewpoint, to some issues or conflicting situations which we regularly encounter as humans and as ethnologists. The article also directs attention to the usefulness of a field diary to analyse the researcher’s empathic attitude towards the narrators in practical research, especially that of life stories. From the point of view of overcoming personal emotions and ethical principles in the attitude to one’s discipline and its ethics, the article focuses on the empathic attitude towards the biography of a (museum) object in its physical and ideological context, in the sense of a source and object of study as well as a carrier of society’s and an individual’s memory.