Taking care of each other

 

My amaryllis twenty-four hours later
It gives me a lot of hope

If we merge mercy

With might, and

Might with right, then love

Becomes legendary.

  Amanda Gorman

Dumbstruck, still and forever, by the amount of hate in this world. Hate for people who are different--race, sexual orientation, religion, politics. The counter to hate, to me, is empathy. Instead of railing about illegal immigrants (someone once said no human being should ever be called illegal—call them undocumented if you must), why not think about that woman who walked three thousand miles carrying her possessions—and her young child—on her back? What had happened to her, her family? What made her so desperate? What did she hope to find? My mom was fond of the old saying, “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” (Only she used a Native American version that substituted moccasins for shoes.)

I read recently of a man who had been a participant in some capacity at the Nuremburg trials of the Nazi war criminals. He said that after careful study he had concluded that the greatest definition of evil was lack of empathy. Makes sense to me, and I am sad that I see that trait all around us these days.

Here’s the dictionary definition: empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Synonyms are: sympathy, pity, feeling, concern, considerateness, consideration, tenderness, tender-heartedness, kindness, kind-heartedness, sensitivity, insight, fellow feeling, brotherly love, neighborliness, decency · humanity · . Gentle words, aren’t they?

Practicing empathy is not easy. I am the first to admit that I too often jump the gun, figuring I know the situation. Not only that, but I am usually quite sure my point of view is the right one. I am trying to teach myself to slow down, find out everything about the situation, listen to the other point of view. Yesterday I talked to ATT five times, three of them to the mechanized voice; Today the Wi-Fi stopped working again, and I called. But I know the ropes now and how to get a real person, and when I did I made it a point to be as nice as I could. Yes, I told him my frustration, but not in accusatory tones. And I asked where he lived, thanked him for his attention. I got what I want: a new router is one the way.

Far too many times, when I try to post what I hope is reason about some of what’s going on in Texas—book banning, voter suppression, that damn wall—I get responses that tell me to go somewhere else, get out of Texas. I want to shout, “I may not be native, but I’ve been here fifty-five years, my family, my career, and my life are here. I’m not leaving.” But the angry voices on Facebook don’t care. They have no empathy.

Right now I think the elected officials who run our country—and most definitely our state—could practice a lot of empathy instead of extreme partisan politics. I think of Tip O’Neill who was Speaker of the House in the late Seventies and early Eighties. He was known for reaching across the aisle, and there was a spirit of collegiality in the House. President Biden, when he was a senator, was also known for collegiality. There is none of that today. Votes are almost strictly along partisan lines, with it seems to me, little thought about their effect on our citizens, and a lot of though about the politicians’ careers.

Take Gov. Abbott’s deployment of troops to “secure” the border. They have had their lives disrupted—businesses closed, educations interrupted, families torn apart, while they sit in poorly equipped camps, bored, never seeing a migrant. But Gov. Abbott is making the former guy and their base happy. What’s a few discontent soldiers? What they are is human beings with lives and hopes and families and fears, not pawns in a game.

If I got a little preachy, I apologize, but empathy—the lack of it, the need for it, has been on my mind for a while. And it’s a hard subject to write about. Years ago, I titled my first novel, “A Year with no Summer,” but the New York publisher changed it to “After Pa Was Shot” because year and summer are intangibles. So is empathy, but we can make it real in our daily lives.