Empathy

I am so stressed by the nightly news that I end up on the couch like an exhausted new mother: horizontal, shoes still on. My heart, like the country, is broken in two.

Shane calls and tells me about his fishing friend who just got a new job this year doing research for the government. NOAA Marine biologist. Bright, happy kid. Fired. “It’s personal now!” Shane says. Hangs up angry.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? And the cure? It’s personal now.

Empathy, I believe, is missing in this world. An act of extreme imagination; empathy. Have we lost our minds? I think most are born with it. Little kids care. They hug you if they see you cry. They stare with saucer eyes when their friends get knees and cut elbows bandaged.

Remember the 60’s? “Walk a mile in my shoes!” Why don’t we want to put on each other’s shoes any more?

Suffering builds empathy. Consequences in my life have grown my heart for all sorts of different people. Do people not suffer anymore? Or maybe, they think they are the only ones that suffer.

Reading develops empathy. Novels, nonfiction about the Holocaust, about love, about an architect who couldn’t conform to mediocracy, an invalid, a leader…. About people I am not. Characters become family to me and I start to see them appear in real life folks. Do we not read anymore?

Literacy rates are going down and memes and vitriol have increased. Honestly, I didn’t even know the meaning of the word “vitriol” until I looked it up a couple years ago.

There can’t be sides to take with empathy. There is just a bunch of people making it through this stuff together.

They tell me in church to “see through my heart”. Like children with saucer eyes! Can we approach different-from-us people as softly as brush sticks over a drum? I read an article about broken heart syndrome today. Apparently - an actual thing. Stress Cardiomyopathy. Heart muscles weaken after loss. So we’ve lost empathy. But the doctor went on to say “most patients make a full recovery.”

Let’s get it back.