Lookin back at 2022, what first comes to mind is the growing movement worldwide for LGBTQ+ people. As Charles Dickens continues on in his opening sentence: “it was the season of Light.” The U.S. passed the Respect for Marriage Act, replacing the old law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and guaranteeing that all states must recognize a marriage that is legal in the state where it was performed. In other words, the right to marry whom you love is now solidified into law.

But then Dickens juxtaposes, “it was the season of Darkness.” 2022 saw a horrendous mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. We saw a huge upsurge in in hate speech and actions against transgender people in particular. School boards across the country removed books with positive content about being gay, and restricted transgender students’ rights to use the bathroom of their gender-identity. Many states passed laws restricting parents’ abilities to seek medical treatment or care for their transgender children.

To go back to Dickens, “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” The media both promoted empathy and reduced it. Empathy is increased when we are exposed to people of different religions, ethnicities, abilities, etc. Perhaps empathy grew when Amy Schneider became the first hugely successful transgender Jeopardy champion, and millions got to know her as a person over the course of her many weeks on the show, especially  because of Jeopardy’s delightful bit where the host asks each of the contestants to relate a fun, interesting personal story/factoid.

But then there was social media, often the epitome of idiocy, sucking people down into self-feeding spirals of prejudice as they followed destructive Twitter hate-filled posts, or explored dark sites on the internet that reinforced hate toward others–not only LGBTQ+ people, but also immigrants, Blacks (see the mass shooting of the grocery store in Buffalo NY), and people of other religions (in 2022, especially against Jews.) Sadly, this too often took the form of actual violence against those who have been deemed the “other”, the enemy. We saw so many mass shootings in the U.S., often by people who have been seduced into believing that all their troubles, all their country’s troubles, are caused by those who have been deemed evil, less than human, not worthy of empathy. The Southern Poverty Law Center is currently monitoring 733 active hate groups in the U.S.

So which way will 2023 go? We can hope that the needle will swing toward a more empathetic world, and we can all do our part to further empathy in our own and others’ lives. But we know that the needle will probably continue to swing wildly. Chances are, Charles Dickens will still be relevant on Jan. 1, 2024.

When the #MeToo movement happened, a close friend put #MeToo on her Facebook page. Surprised, I asked her why. She talked about the painful and scary experience she had on her first job in a small office, when a creepy guy who worked there got too close whenever they were alone, or made lewd comments, or otherwise left her constantly on edge.

One day, a neighbor and I were sitting on my front steps talking. I don’t remember how it came up, but she revealed that her daughter had been raped. She talked about the trauma, and helped me to understand that this happens to a lot more women than we know.

What do these three women have in common? They, and thousands more like them, are empathy promoters. Everyday people, not celebrities or pundits, who bravely share their personal stories with others. We recognize them as our new Featured Empathy Promoters. (On the Home page.)

As we say in our discussion of these everyday heroes:

There will be similarities, and also individual differences, to the stories ordinary people tell, the experiences they share, which gives a depth and layer of complexity to something that is usually talked about or thought about only in generalities. There is truth in details. Adding many stories, many perspectives, gives us a bigger, clearer picture, a more empathetic view. It’s kind of like a photo mosaic. From a distance, it looks like one picture. But step in, look more closely, and you will see the thousands of tiny pictures that create the one big one.

The first steps are listening and learning. Listen to those in the “other” groups to hear what they want from allies (and it will vary from person to person–no group is a monolith; every group consists of individuals who will have some experiences, thoughts and feelings in common, and some pertinent to each person.) Learn about the experiences, thoughts and feelings of those in these “other” groups.

In other words, we start from a base of empathy. If you have empathy for another person unlike yourself, you will want to be their ally and will understand better how to do so in a respectful and helpful way.

There are lots of ways to increase our empathy for others. Learning opportunities abound. Commit to reading books that will help you understand others, including their history. The history of racist oppression/slavery; the history of slaughtering and evicting Native peoples from their land; the history of women being unable to have any legal rights without their husbands’ say so; the history of having to hide who you are (gay) and pretend to be someone you are not; the history of being distrusted and shunned and treated as “less than.” History is what the present is built on, and it has continuing impact on people today.

There are so many excellent choices in non-fiction (for example, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson); in memoirs, to get a more personal viewpoint (for example, The Yellow House by Sarah Broom); in fiction (for example, A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza). An excellent starting place is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. As the library description says, “What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder.” Mr. Coates is a brilliant and luminous writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and is highly recommended.

Other media opportunities for increasing empathy are readily available. Many streaming series are set in other cultures; many movies feature persons of color, other cultures, LGBTQ people, deaf people, and so on. Basically, exposing ourselves often to people and groups not like ourselves normalizes their experiences and lives for us, humanizes them, and broadens the scope of our understanding.

And of course, getting to know others personally is crucial. Go to human rights meetings in your community. Visit other churches. Choose to live in mixed neighborhoods. Get to know the people you work with. Attend Pride events, and cultural celebrations in your community. Talk to the person sitting next to you at the PTO meeting at your child’s school.

We are an increasingly multi-dimensional society, and the opportunities to expand our empathy are endless.

Normally I wouldn’t do this, but today I would like to share a personal post that I put on Facebook yesterday:

Empathy asks us to keep in mind and consider both sides of the coin of otherness: we are all alike, in some ways, and we are all different, in some ways. We are all part of one group: humanity, and have in common the basic needs and traits of human beings. Generally, we all desire love and connection; generally, all cultures value family; generally, we thrive when we can do meaningful work. So maybe we start from that common base, acknowledging that those who seem “other” to us are like us in many ways, connecting in our common humanity.

And of course, each of us is an individual person, with varying life experiences, talents, personalities, and thought processes. Then add the layer of culture, and the layer of the intersectionality of those things that go into forming each  individual person, like one’s race, sexual orientation, sexual identity, age, physical body traits and so on, that all combine with whatever genetics we are born with, to create each of us.

So, if we wish to have empathy for another person, or for another group of persons, we have to keep all of these aspects of the other in our minds and our hearts. That is the premise of an organization founded in 2015 by Minneapolis writer Carolyn Holbrook called More Than a Single Story. As the Star Tribune reports, it was created “to amplify the voices of Minnesota writers of color and Indigenous writers. Its aim is also to combat the stereotypes that emerge when one person’s story is seen as ‘representative of an entire community.'”

Carolyn Holbrook has put together a new book with co-editor David Mura titled “We Are Meant to Rise.” It features almost three dozen essays and poems from a diverse group of storytellers. Book reviewer Lorraine Berry says this book is “a triumph of storytelling, a panoply of of experiences drawn from the diverse peoples of Minnesota.” As her review concludes, “Empathy for others is one way to break down the artificial barriers we construct. But getting to empathy and understanding requires that no single story be taken as the only voice that matters. While the common theme that runs through the pieces is a sort of ‘how we have lived through the past two years,’ the range of responses feels like a broadening of the world after so many months of contraction.”

But empathy also means sharing in others’ joy, happiness, and positive experiences and feelings. I was thinking about that when I was asked, as many of us are these days, what do you most look forward to doing when the pandemic is over? The first thing that leaps to my mind is going to outdoor concerts, especially my two favorites every summer, held in beautiful Mears Park in downtown St. Paul: the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, and the Lowertown Blues and Funk Fest. Not only are these events the perfect place to spend a lovely summer day, with fabulous music–they are also awash in good vibes! People are happy, and it is contagious–the smiles, the laughter, the sharing of food and conversation, the dancing… those good vibes fill the air, and fill the heart and soul. You look around and see all kinds of people there, mingling together in a big happy human mix, and you feel that connection. Maybe you smile at someone who smiles back; maybe you say a few pleasant words to someone in the food trunk line, and they respond and share a little of themselves. And then the music starts, and you thoroughly enjoy watching people dance with abandon. Your empathy picks up on and takes in these positive human feelings, and you feel yourself suffused with the joy of being human in this beautiful world.

We have had to take on a whole lot difficult experiences and feelings this past year. All of these things are important–the great loss of life and the weight of isolation due to Covid; the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many more; the loss of jobs; the increasing political divisiveness. Of course we must pay attention to these things; we must feel empathy for those who have been suffering; and we must do what we can, impelled by our empathy for our fellow human beings, to alleviate that suffering and to right those wrongs, or at least to acknowledge them.

But let us also revel in the joyful side of empathy–sharing the “good vibrations,” as the Beach Boys sang! As lyricist Tony Asher recalls, “Brian [Wilson] was playing what amounts to the hook of the song: ‘Good, good, good, good vibrations.’ … He said he’d always thought that it would be fun to write a song about vibes and picking them up from other people.”

We are reconnecting. It’s what we humans do. Empathy is the glue that holds humanity together.

You can’t really say you have empathy for someone, or for a group of someones, if you don’t give them the respect of taking what they say about themselves and their experiences and their preferences as true, because it is their truth. People get to define themselves, and you show them empathy by listening instead of disputing or contradicting them.

So, if Native Americans/Indians say they find it offensive that a sports team uses Indian tribal names (or the English version of tribal names) for their team name, or uses Indian images for their mascots or their team chants, you listen to them and you respect them and you have empathy for what this feels like to them. You certainly don’t argue that you are showing respect for their culture, when they are telling you that it is in fact the opposite. It is a disgrace that the professional football team from our nation’s capitol is called a clearly offensive name, which shows no empathy for the experience of Native Americans.

And if a woman tells you that what you are doing or saying feels patronizing or offensive to her, you show her respect. You really try to have empathy for her and understand what your actions or words feel like to her. Yes, it’s hard not to get defensive, and maybe you didn’t intend what you said or did that way. But its OK to say that you hadn’t realized how it came off to her, but now you do, because you have listened respectfully.

Respect extends to children, too. When your child is crying, because he has fallen down, or because her friend said she didn’t like her anymore, or because he is embarrassed by something he did in front of his peers, or for whatever reason… show her respect. Please don’t dismiss his feelings or his perception of his experience. Listen, show empathy. It’s one of the most powerful things you can do for your child.

You can show respect for others by checking in with them if you are unsure of the other’s feelings or desires. Ask the person in the wheelchair, “Can I hold the door for you?” And however she answers, respect that. Ask someone what pronoun they would like you to use for them. Ask an older person how they would like you to address them.

Respect extends to everyone, of whatever nationality, religion, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, occupation, age, or whatever. Everyone. You can’t really have empathy for someone if you don’t respect them first.

Has the pandemic increased or decreased empathy in our lives and our world? As usual, the answer seems to be, both.

At the local level, within our own neighborhoods and communities, we are seeing outpourings of compassion for those we know and live with. Empathy is strengthened by connections, so when we see on our neighborhood Facebook page that a child who lives in our neighborhood is going to have a lonely birthday, we rally round and all put balloons in our windows for her to see as she walks by. We worry about our 90-year-old neighbor who we know lives far from her children. We bake her a pan of lasagna, and leave it on her porch, and then wave to her and shout from the sidewalk, “Hello, how are you?” when she steps out to get it. We can easily imagine how hard it is to be alone at such a time; we can easily understand how a nine-year-old would be disappointed to not have a birthday party with her friends.

We connect more than ever on social media. We sympathize with a co-worker who posts that her family will be staying at home rather than taking their long-planned vacation. We see pleas for people to make face masks for health care workers, and someone posts a photo of a family member who is a doctor and is putting their life on the line for all of us; we respond affirmatively, making that empathetic connection. Our local food shelf tells us that some in our community need extra help since they are now unemployed, and we bring our donations in. We order pizza from our favorite neighborhood pizzeria, wanting to help them in these tough times. Maybe we know the owners. We can see the face our of favorite server in our minds, and we empathize with her. We post humorous videos to help others feel better. (Use of humor is one way we can tell young children experience empathy, by the way. Often, when a three-year-old sees a friend crying, he will bop himself in the head and then do a pratfall–guaranteed to cheer the crying child up!) We post photos of gorgeous landscapes, sharing appreciation for our beautiful world. We connect, despite the social distance, because we need to, now more than ever.

And then, on the other hand… People start hoarding supplies, taking from others what those others also need. They cut off their feelings of empathy for others, putting up that defensive wall of “us” vs “them”. In all crises, this one included, some people act selfishly, deliberately turning off their concern for others. They congregate in large groups on beaches because they do not want to stop their fun, their enjoyment of the moment. They shut off their regard for others. Some of our leaders seem more concerned with how this epidemic affects them personally, rather than feeling and showing empathy for those they serve.

Honestly, it is harder to maintain one’s empathy for others when one is overwhelmed by sadness, fear, anxiety and a feeling of powerlessness. But every time we make an empathetic connection with another person, that counteracts the negative feelings a bit. If we can feel that we are all in this together, our hope increases. If we reach out in empathy to someone we know is suffering during this pandemic, our own positive feelings grow. Perhaps we expand our circle of empathy to include those in other countries, maybe those in poor or war-torn countries who are suffering even more because of this pandemic. We pay attention to what is happening there, or maybe we send a donation to an organization such as Doctors Without Borders that is dedicated to helping those most in need around the world.

Sometimes, deliberately trying to expand our empathy for others, even when we don’t feel we have the emotional reserves to do so, actually helps us feel better. And sometimes, being honest in sharing our feelings and experiences, we ask for empathy from others, and feel stronger when we receive it. Or we see that others are experiencing the same things we are, the same trials and the same joys, and we know that we are not alone.

Truly, it our empathetic connection to others that will ultimately get us through this global crisis.

It hit me that I have grown up with Mr. Rogers, essentially. My dad is strikingly similar to Fred Rogers, except that he has a loud, booming voice and laugh, where Fred Rogers was very soft-spoken. But in one very key element, they are similar: both men are highly empathetic.

I watched on the big screen as Mr. Rogers responded with profound attention and care to every person he encountered, whether a small boy with a life-threatening illness who visited him on the set–Mr. Rogers holding up the shooting of the show in order to give undivided attention to this boy, however long the encounter took; or to the journalist who was interviewing him for a magazine profile, which was the heart of this film. He didn’t just answer the journalist’s questions; he was more interested in getting to know him as a person. He clearly sensed that this journalist had deep unresolved problems and pain, and gently helped him to open up. He genuinely cared about this man, and the man, while resistant, could sense that. They developed a relationship. Mr. Rogers even prayed for the journalist and his family, as he did for many people each day.

Fred Rogers was an ordained minister, as was my dad. And both of them had as their foundation the belief that every single person matters, that every single person is unique and special. As Mr. Rogers told his young viewers every day: “You’re special, and I like you just the way you are.”

So, yesterday I spent some time with my dad and his wife watching old home videos that I’d brought. One of them was of his retirement party. Dad’s last job had been as a counselor working for an organization that helped disabled people. Several of his clients–friends–were at the party. At one point, as we were giving toasts and such, Dad’s wife read a letter that a client had sent to Dad. She talked about how this “gentle man” had listened to her, week after week, for ten years, finally helping her understand that every single person has value and worth, every single person is unique and special–including herself.

Dad connects with every person he meets, whether it’s the nurses who helped him after his knee surgery, or the person checking him out at Target. He is genuinely interested in each individual person, and he will remember what they told him and will continue the conversation the next time he sees them, because he really listens. He has empathy in abundance, just as Fred Rogers did.

Imagine if we could all care about each other, could listen to each other, could appreciate how special and unique each person on this earth is, just as Mr. Rogers and my father understood.

So while we may try to understand others as members of a group, it can veer into stereotyping if we’re not careful. People get profiled for lots of reasons, such as on social media by advertisers trying to sell them something. People get profiled in person, as well. All the time. As evidenced by the spate of publicity about not just DWB (driving while black), but BnB’ingWB, sleeping in a dormWB, sitting in a coffee shopWB, and on and on…

I was talking with my neighbor, a black man living in a suburban neighborhood, who is a professor in the medical school at the university. He said he often gets profiled as a white man, because of his education and job, and because of lots of other reasons, including the magazines he subscribes to. Even people of color, such as custodians in his building, sometimes assume he is not Dr. B. when they enter his office.

Women get this when they are the doctor, and the patient assumes they are the nurse and demands to see a doctor. Male preschool teachers are assumed to be a dad, not the teacher. Elderly people are frail, and lesbians love sports, and mentally-ill people are dangerous, and…well, you can fill in the stereotypes. Sure, it’s fun to laugh along with a Jewish comic when she makes jokes about growing up Jewish, but that doesn’t mean their description is going to apply to the next Jewish person you meet.

Yes, people in a group often have common experiences which shape them, or cultural norms that they share. It’s a good thing to expand our empathy to people outside of our own groups, for sure. As long as we always remember that every individual is just that–a special, unique individual person. As long as we reach out and open ourselves up to understand persons we meet without assuming anything about them before we’ve even gotten to know them. As long as we maintain our empathy for each member of humanity, the one group we all have in common.