Doing Empathy

Not always easy, empathy, which is probably one of the most essential components of friendship.  It is always harder to be a friend than to find one.  It is always harder to give than receive.  Empathy, of course, is not only necessary to maintain friendships and other relationships, it is also indispensable to our ability to get along in community.

We all succeed at failing.  We fail as spouses, partners, parents, children, employers, employees, and we fail as friends.  This is universal.  Even with empathy we almost always stumble when it comes to the crunch.  Following an epiphany moment of sublime inspiration we suddenly fall short of living out the lofty ideal we had moments ago committed to.

Without empathy we are nothing.  We cannot form healthy, healing relationships without it.  We cannot be a couple, a family, a circle of friends, a nurturing workplace, not without empathy.

Empathy is more than a pleasant, moving emotion.  It requires work, often hard work.  I mentioned in a couple of recent posts that we tend, as flawed humans, to be lazy, fearful and self-interested.  These traits seem to never cease to squat over us like fetid, creeping shadows. 

Here is what I try to do.  Before I go out in the morning I often try to remind myself that before I open the door I will have already failed.  I will silently judge the other tenant in the elevator, or I will swear softly at the smoker on the sidewalk who just wrecked my enjoyment of the rain-washed air, no sooner than stepping outside.  I will critically appraise the way people at the bus stop are dressed.  I will curse the bus driver for not lowering the stoop on a day when my knee reminds me that I am sixty.  Knowing these things in advance I can already begin my counter attack.  I can remind myself that I am but one of many trying to make my way through the day, trying to cope with life, trying to cope with the hopeless idiots that are other people.  I will remind myself that we are all hopeless idiots, that we are all stressed, that we are all scattered across the earth trying to find our home.  I can remind myself that we are all in this together.  I can be reminded of the sublime power of kindness.

Committing random acts of kindness can help set empathy in motion.  Picking up the keys for the young man getting on the bus and handing them to him, as he didn't even know that he dropped them; holding a café door open for a mother with a baby in a buggy, or a father carrying a child; smiling kindly at the stranger whose eyes meet mine while walking on the bridge; giving money to a beggar, but also stopping to hear what kind of day they are having.

It's not a magic bullet.  We seem to often, almost always push against our inherent self-centredness, not because we are essentially bad, but because we are essentially good, and we know that the effort of pushing against our selfish nature, which is not our true nature, with God's help, will strengthen that good seedling as it struggles to life from the very core of our being.

Bless you, Gentle Reader.