This is a more personal blog post than usual, because I live in a suburb of St. Paul, and we raised our children in a suburb of Minneapolis where a lot of ICE action has been happening. I know people who have been impacted: the owners of our favorite Mexican restaurant, which had to shut down for a while, and still keep their doors locked–you have to knock to be admitted. The son of one of our old neighbors, who was participating in the phone video documentation of ICE activities when he was assaulted by ICE agents, thrown to the ground, and had several ribs broken. The clients we served at the free store I volunteer at in Minneapolis, who had been about 50% Spanish-speakers, but during this time we didn’t see them. They couldn’t leave their homes. The food shelf next to our free store delivered food, very carefully, to immigrants who needed it. My friend who helped with this experienced such a warm reception from those he delivered to, at least once they felt secure enough to answer their door when he came. Warm smiles, hugs. “Gracias, amigo.” Teachers I know raised money to buy food and supplies for their families who needed it. Friends served as escorts to walk children safely to their school. We all tried to support immigrant restaurants and other businesses. When my family and I ate at an Ethiopian restaurant a couple weeks ago, the place was packed, and the mood was joyful.

Thomas Friedman, renowned opinion writer for the New York Times, who also grew up in Minneapolis, wrote a perfect piece recently about the sum total impact of the unexpected mass empathetic movement here. As he said:

“I spent time in my native state, Minnesota, after something else that I’d never seen in nearly 50 years: a spontaneous uprising of civic activism propelled by a single idea — I am my neighbor’s keeper, whoever he or she is and however he or she got here.

But what of the cost of denying someone the expression or action of empathy? What of the pain of being forced into an anti-empathetic action?

The most dramatic examples of this come from military service, when soldiers are trained to suppress their empathetic feelings for the “enemy” so that they can shoot these other human beings when ordered to. So that commanders can order their soldiers to commit acts they would not otherwise do. PTSD arises not just from being in harm’s way in battle or from seeing one’s fellow soldiers injured or killed, but also from having to commit acts against one’s sense of common humanity. On the Wounded Warriors website, they include Moral Injury in the list of causes of PTSD in military veterans: “Moral injury refers to the emotional and psychological distress that occurs when a service member experiences, witnesses, or participates in actions that violate their personal moral or ethical code. This type of trauma can cause deep feelings of guilt, shame, or betrayal and can contribute to the development of PTSD.”

But what prompted this post today was an op-ed commentary on animal experimentation in the June 24 Minnesota Star Tribune by Clark Gustafson and Neal Barnard. They told of their experience in college of having to deny rats water to conduct a Skinnerian experiment to get the rats to press a bar for water, and then, at the end of the experiment, having to dump the rat subjects into a garbage can and pour poison over them to kill them. As Clark said, “Killing small animals was not what I’d signed up for, and I quit.” They talk about their dismay at finding recently that their alma mater, Macalester College, still has students do animal experiments. As they affirmed, “Apart from the animal deaths, the laboratory exercises also kill that part of the student’s ethical sense that calls for compassion, even for beings we may not fully understand. It seemed that this once-great institution, where Hubert Humphrey taught and Walter Mondale and Kofi Annan studied, teaches students that animals are “tools” and that science and compassion are incompatible.”

In response to this opinion piece, a reader shared the pain of being forced to treat lab animals as objects–to inflict pain on them, and to having to euthanize them at the end of the experiment. In this case as well, the animals were rats. Yes. lowly creatures in many people’s eyes. And yet, this reader still feels the trauma of this experience 50 years later. (As an owner of two pet rats from back when I was a teacher, I can attest to the intelligence and social sophistication of  rats. But being more human-like, while it increases our empathy for other animals, isn’t necessary for one to feel empathy for all living creatures.) He says, “when students participate in cruel activities it can do long-term damage to the students themselves because of the moral injury that is created.” He poignantly discusses his own experience: “Literally 50 years ago, when taking a college psychology class at Pomona College, I performed experiments on rats that caused those animals great discomfort, and I still carry guilt and shame about how I treated those animals. I also had to euthanize the animals after the experiment was done and watch them die. It was traumatizing. I am writing this letter because I urge Macalester and all other educational institutions to stop injuring students in this way, as well as to stop harming animals. Encouraging students to override their sense of innate compassion for other living beings causes lifelong damage to them and the effects never go away.”

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.

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.