Empathy Pt. 2

You're eight years old, inside of a hospital staring into the window of the ICU. You are looking at your grandfather; a person you love and the person who raised you sleeping on a hospital bed. Beep. . . beep, the sound of the heart monitor. Next thing you know. Flat line. His heart stops beating as you watch helplessly. Do you know how it would feel if you went through this? Likely not. Unless you've been through this exact situation you couldn't imagine the pain you'd feel as an eight year old child witnessing this. However, my best friend, my brother, Daniel shared this story with me, and graciously allowed me to use it in this post. This post to restate how we don't have empathy and can't put ourselves into shoes we haven't been in, talk about the things that other people deal with the things you don't see, and finally tell you how you're not special.

I wrote Empathy, the prerequisite post, at fifteen. I'm sixteen now, it's been close to a year, and I still stand by the statement that "no one can put themselves into shoes that don't fit." I'm simply going to restate my general premise. Humans cannot preform emotional or soul empathy. The only empathy which humans can feel is physical empathy, this is proven by science through our mirror neurons (you see someone smile, it makes you smile). While we can have sympathy, and we can feel a general soul and emotional empathy. However, we can't truly feel empathy unless you've been through someone's exact situation.

With that quick restating of how we don't have empathy, I will say that this post was originally going to be called "What You Don't Know." I changed it to Empathy Pt. 2 because it related closely. Starting now, I'll talk about what that title entitled.

When you go through your routine every day. Whether you're going to work, or going to school. On your way there, and usually at your destination, you see a lot of people. Some you know, and some you don't know. I recently realized, all of these people, the ones I know and don't, the ones I talk to and don't, they all, every single one of them, have things going on in there life that I don't know about. This applies to you to, assuming that you can't read every single human beings mind and know what's happening in their life. Even the people closest to you likely have things that you do not know about. Humans just can't always express everything because no one would ever stop talking. Now, when you go through your day, when you go through your life, and you see everyone: mean people, nice people, ignorant people. All people have things going on in their life, and you don't always, if ever, know about what those things are. Don't assume you know people, don't judge people's demeanor or mood, because you don't know what's going on. You just make sure you keep your demeanor contained, that you keep your mood positive, because you can control yourself, and you should do so. Know and remember who cares about you, tell them the prominent things going on in your life, and just show love and kindness to all other humans, they probably don't want to know or don't care to know about your situations, which can be positive or negative.

Now what else does this tell you? Well, as stated you don't know the situations of all the people around you. You do, however, know the things going on in your life. This may trigger an excessive self-regard tendency—a cognitive bias in which we think we're over average. I'm here to tell you, you're not special. All the problems you have are being had by someone else, have been had by someone else, and will be had by someone else. Along with that there are people with problems much worse than yours, and people with problems much better than yours. It's important to remember that you are not the only one with problems in life. Everyone is going through things, be aware of that simple fact—you'll never know all there problems and it's better if you don't. You aren't the only one with problems. All you can do is, again, show people love and kindness and control yourself, and don't judge or look down upon others if they do something to negatively affect you. Just remember, though. You're not special.

As I also said in Empathy, while it may not be possible, it's something we should emulate, while being mindful of the fact that we can never be 100% accurate in emulating a situation which we've never been through, we can just be grateful that we as humans even have the capability to try—it's truly amazing and beautiful, but that's another post. In this post, we talked about how it's impossible to engage in emotional and soul empathy, how you're not the only human that is going through problems both positive and negative in life, and how this means that you are not special, other people matter too. We should all as humans strive to love and protect each other, to value each other as much as we value ourselves, but this is a dream that we must evolve to accomplish. For now, "be the change you want to see in the world."-Ghandi. Thank you for reading this all the way, I hope you have a sanguine week, I'll see you the next, peace.