Empathy

Empathy is the key skill that I would like to teach my staff, my child, my colleagues and my friends, not to mention my ex-husband. Empathy will affect not only their lives, positively, but in the connectedness of things, the whole entire world.

Such a claim.

I've come to realize that my life was formed in many ways by people who didn't have a lot of empathy. After much reflection, I can see how they themselves came to be formed that way. It's the Philip Larkin poem, our parents screw us up. So I no longer blame them for how they guided me in life. In fact, perhaps it was that I encountered a lack of care about how others were feeling or assumptions of knowing what was right without questioning, that lead me as a child to feel somewhat clueless and thus constantly try to figure out what the hell was going on, what other people were thinking or feeling, and thus develop considerable empathy. So thanks are perhaps due.

Accompanying a solid lack of empathy is often a belief that life should be good. That the pleasures and successes and acclaim are what make life good, and we want those and try to avoid the opposite.

But the bad is needed. If hadn't been so bad, we wouldn't know it was so good (thanks Vincent Coyle). If we have never gone hungry, we wouldn't know the joy of eating every day (thanks Thich Nhat Hanh).

Once you realize that the bad stuff is all around and here to stay, that shit really and truly does happen, then you can relax in the middle of all that shit. It's just shit. It happens. You can still step out of the big pile of steaming stuff, but you don't have to blame yourself or the shit-maker.

Because at various times, we play both roles.

Often in DC, I'm the frustrated driver behind the slow Sunday driver. I wonder what is wrong with that person, that they are not aware of me behind them, trying to get to my destination.

And sometimes I'm the Sunday driver, with no rush to be anywhere on a beautiful, sunny afternoon driving down a curving road along grassy parks and tall trees. And to the Infinity driver who zoomed past me after having to be behind me down the last part of Rock Creek Parkway this afternoon, my heart goes out to you. I know what that feels like. It must have been hard as I moseyed along. And thank you for not driving up my rear bumper, in the time before the frustrated zoom.

I've done that zoom. I've yelled at my kid, I've snapped at my mother, I've pulled onto the road without really having enough of a gap to do so. I've made that shit for others. I apologize.

I do try to be kind, considerate, compassionate, thoughtful, aware, but sometimes I make mistakes and exercise bad judgement. Sometimes we're full of anger, wrapped up in our thoughts, full of our own opinions on life. Sometimes we make shit happen.

In learning to see the shit I make, and to take responsibility for it, I'm learning to forgive myself. And I have a soft spot for those going through the same thing. I know what it's like.

And so I won't give you the finger in traffic (most times). And on the times I don't, that is part of changing the whole, entire world.