What the World Needs Now - Empathy
Challenges can test us and sometimes in the most dire circumstances, they can bring us to our very limits. But when we find a way of surviving and moving forward through those hard times, they can transform us into incredible gifts for others because they give us the chance to truly fill the shoes others will walk in.
So it’s finally happened: I tested positive for COVID this morning. I had the feeling that something was off as early as Monday, so I stuck around home and waited with crossed fingers, but by yesterday afternoon, I was running a fever and feeling generally rotten and this morning, I had my first positive test.
Seeing that second line on the test sent a wash of feelings. I had tried hard to avoid this for two and a half years, making it through the Delta variant and the renditions of the Ob 1-3 or 4. I had no illusions of escaping it forever. I typically caught a cold or a flu bug once or twice a year and in reality, because I’ve been isolating and wearing masks in crowded places, I haven’t even had those annoying colds. So, bottomline, I don’t feel picked on and in some ways, though I’ll continue to be careful moving forward regardless of how much or how little immunity getting the virus gives me, there’s somewhat of a relief too. Thanks to the vaccines and boosters, my case hasn’t been too awful. And now I have something else that can come with hard situations: empathy.
If I could point a finger at a single attribute that our world could use more of right now, it would be empathy. Empathy is the remarkable ability for us to not just feel sorry for others and not just hope that things work out better for them, but it is, in some real senses, the ability to feel the pain that others feel. This shared experience can create a much deeper connection and can bring comfort like very few things can.
I had the chance to speak to a church congregation a while back about how we can still hope for good things to come even during the hardest times. In that address, I relayed the experience of waking up in the hospital not being able to walk or talk, and going through the years of therapy to regain those skills that we typically take for granted when our health is sound.
After the meeting, a wonderful older gentleman pulled me aside and told me how much he appreciated my talk because he has a granddaughter who recently had a brain injury similar to mine and she too was relearning how to walk and talk and currently was using a wheelchair. Instantly, I felt a deep connection to this genuine and warm man and, though I had never met his granddaughter, I felt a connection to her as well.
Not to say that we have to have our own brain injuries to get some glimpse of the challenge they would pose. Thankfully, humans have the remarkable ability of “perspective taking” where we imagine what situations would be like and extrapolating those feelings and scenarios into our minds. Our brains have even developed mirror neurons that are specifically designed to teach us how to replicate the situations we see others in. If we see someone carrying a heavy box, we don’t just think “that looks heavy.” Our brains teach us what it would feel like to carry that load ourselves. But when we go through our own hardships, maybe one way of looking for silver linings is to think about how much more able we’ll be to comfort those dealing with similar challenges.
Challenges can test us and sometimes in the most dire circumstances, they can bring us to our very limits. But when we find a way of surviving and moving forward through those hard times, they can transform us into incredible gifts for others because they give us the chance to truly fill the shoes others will walk in.