The Empathy Symbol https://empathysymbol.com A symbol for today Sun, 09 Mar 2025 18:26:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://empathysymbol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cropped-empathysmaller-32x32.gif The Empathy Symbol https://empathysymbol.com 32 32 95491695 Up is Down, In is Out, and Empathy is Bad…?! https://empathysymbol.com/up-is-down-in-is-out-and-empathy-is-bad/ https://empathysymbol.com/up-is-down-in-is-out-and-empathy-is-bad/#respond Sun, 09 Mar 2025 18:23:09 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=6284 Who would have thought we’d have needed to write a blog post defending empathy as a good thing? But here we are…

We all thought empathy is an indisputably positive trait, but Elon Musk is here to set us straight. He was on the Joe Rogan show recently (2/28) where he expounded on his belief that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He called the empathy response in our larger society “a bug in Western civilization.”
Sure, he says, it’s ok for individual humans to show empathy toward other individuals, but when society, and especially our government, acts with empathy toward its citizens, that’s a bug in the system, a glitch that needs to be fixed. As Musk sees it, if we care about our fellow citizens who need help, and demand that our legislators act accordingly, we are making our country worse, and weaker, by spending our government’s money on things like food assistance for children who are hungry, or health care for people who can’t pay for it on their own.
Clearly, Musk feels that people who are hurt by the lack of government assistance are collateral damage. An acceptable price to pay. In the Doctrine of Elon, individual chumps can donate to relief funds for victims of natural disasters, like the recent victims of the California wildfires or the North Carolina hurricane, but our country as a whole should not be funding FEMA, or for that matter, our national weather forecasting system, or public media like NPR that are often the community’s main source of information on disasters, both pre-disaster and the ongoing situation, especially in rural areas. Of course, Musk believes that funding humanitarian relief for other countries, especially African nations, or funding disease-prevention in other parts of the world, or funding better methods of agricultural production in other countries, or basically anything that USAID does, is stupid, worthless.
Sorry, Elon, you are not the genius you believe yourself to be, nor are you the savior of our country. Our communities, our nation, and our world are made far better and stronger with empathy as a core value and guiding principle.
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Empathy Truly For All https://empathysymbol.com/empathy-truly-for-all/ Sat, 28 Dec 2024 21:50:48 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=6268 An important part of empathy is connection. We make a connection with others, whether directly, or through reading or viewing or other means.

What if we connected with more others–not just humans, but other living beings? Animals, certainly. Our home (that is, our planet) would be a much better place if we responded to animals with empathy–our pets who share our lives, farm animals, wild animals, all animals. But let’s push that even further.

I am reading a book titled Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants  by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She has a PhD in botany, and she is also a member of the Great Lakes Potawatomi tribe. For her, as well as for others who are coming to understand that plants are living beings with a social community, via their root systems, and the spores and pollen and other organic compounds that they release into the air. Some people believe that plants make sounds, that they sing. That they respond to music. And so we should thank them for their offerings–their fruit, their branches, even their whole being–that we use, knowing that they are giving of themselves for us, and therefore also not taking more than we need.

But let’s go even further. Kimmerer says, “In Potawatomi, rocks are animate, as are mountains and water and fire and places. …of an apple, we must say, “Who is that being?’ And reply “Mshimin Yawe.” Apple that being is. Interestingly, she goes on to say that Yawe is the animate to be, and asks, “By what linguistic confluence do Yahweh of the Old Testament and yawe of the New World both fall from the mouths of the reverent?” If water is animate, we are not just polluting it, but poisoning a living entity. If mountains are animate, when we remove their tops to mine them, are we essentially decapitating them?

As it happens, I was especially drawn to Kimmerer’s first statement: rocks are animate. I was a preschool teacher for many years. My favorite project that we explored with our 4- and 5-year-olds was one they initiated themselves, when one child brought in a pocketful of rocks from the playground and asked us, “Are rocks alive?” We could have just said no, and explained the difference between living and non-living things, but fortunately we did not. We asked, What do you think? And so began a month-long exploration by the kids of rocks. At the end we asked them, what do you think, are rocks alive? Some said no, some weren’t sure, and some said yes. They had various reasons, such as that things that are alive drink water, and rocks found in streams and oceans probably drink that water, or that things that are alive grow, and there are small rocks and bigger rocks. Some said that things that are alive make noise, and when they banged their rocks together, they made noise. Others said that things that are alive can move, and when they rolled their rocks, they moved. One child observed that her rock had red and white streaks in it, like bones and blood. Julia said that her rock could stand up by itself, and so could she! Zane said that when his father went hunting, he only shot things that were alive. But he had seen his father shoot rocks, so they must be alive. Ultimately, we never told the kids “the answer”. They were free to continue exploring, and to conclude as they saw it. And how glad we are that we did not. I think now that maybe the kids were more right than I knew! I have always collected a rock from places I have traveled to, and I love looking at them and remembering the anniversary trip my husband I took to England 26 years ago, and the family trip we took to Alaska a few months ago, and all the places in between. And how do I know–maybe the rocks are communicating with each other!

How much better our home, the Earth, would be if we had empathy for it as a complete living being, with many living components, with a living spirit!

 

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Empathy Up Close and Personal https://empathysymbol.com/empathy-up-close-and-personal/ Tue, 10 Sep 2024 17:07:43 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=6003 There are lots of ways to gain empathy for others.

There’s the media—books, TV, movies, online videos, podcasts.

There are the people we meet—co-workers from different cultures, students at the university we are attending, neighbors down the street who maybe put up a menorah in their window in December instead of a Christmas tree. The person that your sibling marries, or the child of your friend who has special needs.

As we listen with an open heart and mind, as we experience the “other” with true interest and respect, our empathy increases. Of course, we are always mindful that individuals vary widely in their interests, talents, personalities and so on. Any one person cannot represent their whole group (culture, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.), although members of that group probably have feelings and experiences in common as well.

And then, hopefully, we spread that empathy around. Empathy is a value that needs to be shared, that other people need to see and hear.

And we may become true allies and advocates for others. As I have found, this is especially true when that other is close to us. When they share the deeper and more personal aspects of their lives. And of course, when we love them and care deeply about them. Then we have an urge not just to share our empathy, but to stand up for them and try to educate others when those others express non-understanding, whether in innocent or hurtful ways, or when they express a genuine desire to understand further.

And so I have found with my own daughter—my beautiful transgender daughter, who came out to us and our family and friends about a year ago, at age 34. She has shared her deeply personal feelings and experiences, and I want to share that with others, as I can.

Transgender people are particularly being targeted these days, with prejudice and anti-trans laws and derision. In fact, transgender people are being used as political fodder, which is so harmful and hurtful. When our family enjoyed a trip to Alaska this summer, I was prepared to step in if anyone hassled our daughter and to firmly tell them to back off! Confrontation is not my normal forte, as my family will tell you, but this is personal. Don’t mess with my daughter! (As it happened, all was fine.)

When someone expresses doubt that a trans person really has always wanted to be the other gender, I can affirm that my child felt that way since she was very young, which she expressed and I wrote down in the journal I kept on her. It’s good to have this written down, because of course she doesn’t remember her early memories herself, as we all generally don’t. She told me, when she was in first grade, that when she was little (presumably early preschool age) that she hoped that she would turn out to be a girl. At age 3 or 4, gender is just becoming set in, and she thought that it could go either way.

She also said when she was 7 that she really wished she could braid her hair. And now she wears long, lovely braids. I can affirm that everyone in the family has commented on how relaxed and noticeably happier she is now that she is living as her true self. It is a beautiful thing!

Of course, as I said earlier, everyone’s experience is individual. Gender is a continuum, and people figuring out how they feel and what they want for themselves can vary. Certainly by age—I read about a transgender woman who transitioned in her 60s. And as for my own child, she remembers telling her older brother that she wanted to be a tomboy when she was in elementary school, and being dismayed when he said only girls could be tomboys.

So please, don’t be silent—share with others what you know, what you have learned, what your loved one has experienced and felt, to the extent that they feel comfortable with you sharing. As an ally, listen to others, and keep listening, and keep learning. Be open. Remember that everyone’s personal journey is their own. In fact, as she pointed out to me, we are all in a constant process of discovering who we are.

Then empathy will increase in a meaningful way, and you will have made the world a truly better place.

(Note: This blog post was written in collaboration with daughter.)

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Empathy and Compassion https://empathysymbol.com/empathy-and-compassion/ Mon, 08 Jan 2024 17:12:03 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5960 Is too much empathy bad for your mental health?

Recently the New York Times published an opinion piece by Adam Grant about the problem of “empathetic distress: hurting for others while feeling unable to help.” He talks about this in regard to many people being so overwhelmed with empathetic feelings for those in our world whose suffering is front-page news every day: Palestinians in Gaza, Jews in Israel after the terror attack, victims of the seemingly endless school shootings.

He says that taking on others’ pain, incorporating it but feeling helpless to do anything about it or to alleviate it, leaves people feeling numb, and eventually they check out emotionally. “Having concluded that nothing they do will make a difference, they start to become indifferent”, as a measure of self-preservation.

Grant says that what is needed in the face of large-scale human suffering and tragedy is not empathy, but compassion. “The most basic form of compassion is not assuaging distress but acknowledging it. When we can’t make people feel better, we can still make a difference by making them feel seen.”

However. Empathy and compassion are both vital components of positive social and interpersonal life. We don’t need to create a dichotomy between them that sets one up as better than the other. Grant gives a narrow definition of empathy, saying “Empathy absorbs others’ emotions as your own: ‘I’m hurting for you.’ Compassion focuses your action on their emotions: ‘I see that you’re hurting, and I’m here for you.’”

While compassion is a response to others’ pain, we see empathy as much broader. Empathy involves listening to and trying to get an understanding of others’ life experiences, feelings, perspectives, and so on. So, for example, as a white 70-year-old heterosexual woman, I don’t know what it is like to be a young black person, or how it really feels to grow up knowing you’re gay and being afraid of the reaction if people knew, or living with a disability that too many people see as the definition of who you are. But I can certainly listen with an open mind and heart. I can increase my empathy for others, but this doesn’t mean I am taking on their pain as my own and holding onto it.

After George Floyd was murdered by the police, the comedian Amber Ruffin did a serious segment on Seth Myers’ show sharing how it felt to be hanging out on a porch with her black friends, just having a good time, when a police car pulled up and they were all regarded suspiciously, raising their fear and apprehension, and of course their feeling of the injustice of this. I was deeply moved by her sharing her story.

In the broader meaning of empathy, as it is commonly used, it is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. Essentially, it is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

Empathy is not just a response to painful situations. It is total, and it is positive: understanding others as best one can in all their full humanness. It is reading a book set in another culture, and appreciating the joy, the life experiences of others as well as the hardships. It is listening to someone you know coming out to you as transgender, and not only trying to understand their pain as they lived a life that felt false, but also listening to and appreciating their joy as they share how they have come into their own authentic self. It doesn’t cast everyone whom one should have empathy for as victims, but as full human beings.

Compassion. Empathy. These are components of living well as prosocial beings. They are often missing in people who lack these abilities to see beyond their own personal life, who experience interactions with others as adversarial, who can’t see others as full human beings. People who lack empathy are antithetical to a well-functioning family, workplace or society in general.

Fortunately, the vast majority of people are compassionate and empathetic. This is human beings’ superpower, you might say.

 

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Dickens is Right Again https://empathysymbol.com/dickens-is-right-again/ Mon, 09 Jan 2023 18:30:28 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5907 To quote probably the most-often quoted opening line in literature: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” In this case, for empathy.

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.

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Everyone is an Empathy Promoter! https://empathysymbol.com/everyone-is-an-empathy-promoter/ Tue, 12 Jul 2022 20:03:32 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5875 Shortly after Roe v. Wade went into effect, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mom and my grandma. I asked them what they thought about abortion. As I expected, my mom said she thought it was wrong. But my grandma surprised me when she said she was in favor of legal abortion. Then she told us why. We had all known that she had to quit school at age 12 to stay home to care for her dad and her younger sister when her mother died. Now she revealed that her mother had died on an abortionist’s table, desperate because they couldn’t afford another child.

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.

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The First Step Toward Being an Ally: Empathy https://empathysymbol.com/the-first-step-toward-being-an-ally-empathy/ Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:56:57 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5859 “Ally.” It’s a buzzword you hear frequently. People who are white, heterosexual, male, Christian, etc. want to be allies to those who are in a more marginalized or oppressed group. But how?  In this month of June, as we celebrate both Juneteenth and Gay Pride, let’s think about that.

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.

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Mean Humor or Good-Natured Teasing? https://empathysymbol.com/mean-humor-or-good-natured-teasing/ Tue, 29 Mar 2022 17:40:31 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5817 There is a line between laughing at someone and laughing with someone. That line is empathy.

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

When one goes to post on FB, it says “What’s on your mind?” So I am going to share what’s on mind, rather than just fun happy stuff this time, because I feel compelled to. Perhaps it is because the whole Will Smith/Chris Rock thing has been so prominent today. I have been thinking about humor that makes fun of people, a very common type of humor indeed. I never liked Don Rickles. He wasn’t funny, he was just mean. I don’t like teasing, because it fundamentally involves making fun of someone for something they don’t think is funny. “C’mon, I was just teasing, can’t you take a joke?”
And now I am going to do a 90-degree turn. I am part of a group that is one of the last groups which it is still socially acceptable to make fun of. All late night comedians do it. Comic strips that I otherwise like do it. It is, apparently, hilarious to make fun of vegans. And if I don’t find the jokes funny, it’s because vegans have no sense of humor (another common punch line–haha, all vegans are self-righteous jerks.)
So, please understand I am not trying to persuade anyone here to not eat animal products. All I am asking is for respect and understanding for people who find it important not to do so. (Parenthetical disclaimer here: you all who are my friends don’t make fun of me for being vegan, so don’t take this personally. It is a general concern.)
Ok, this is really long already, but one more thing. What actually spurred this post, in fact: On the news tonight, they were talking about the bird flu which is hitting domestic chicken flocks again. A spokesperson said, in order to reassure consumers that they wouldn’t be eating diseased chickens, that if bird flu were found in a flock (while the video showed a barn stuffed with hundreds of chickens), they would “depopulate these flocks of birds.” Depopulate! A sickening euphemism to me for mass killing of animals.
I was so upset about this that I wanted to post here, on my Facebook feed, about it. And then I thought, I can’t do that, I better just post it to my Vegan Minnesota groups.
And then I thought again, no I just have to say something.
So there you are. I guess this is my final plea: if you want to find humor making fun of someone else, have some empathy and ask yourself if they would really think it’s funny.
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Expanding Our Empathy https://empathysymbol.com/both-aspects-of-empathy/ Sun, 28 Nov 2021 21:52:19 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5777 It is tempting to think that one is expanding one’s empathy for others by, for example, listening to a podcast by a person of color and extrapolating from that to assure oneself that one now has empathy for all people of color. And sure, it is a step on the road to expanding one’s empathetic responses to others. But that’s not all there is.

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.”

 

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Sharing the Positive Human Vibe https://empathysymbol.com/sharing-the-positive-human-vibe/ Fri, 02 Apr 2021 18:02:02 +0000 https://empathysymbol.com/?p=5712 It feels like people often think about empathy in terms of understanding other people’s pain, suffering or hardships. And that is an important component. The #MeToo movement asks us to listen to women’s experiences of being sexually harrassed, assaulted or debased, and to try to understand their feelings and how this has affected them. Black Lives Matter asks us to listen to the black person’s experience of being regarded with suspicion when driving, entering a store, jogging down a street, renting an AirBnB, sitting in a coffeeshop, watching birds in a park… the list, sadly, goes on and on. The Gay Rights movement asks us to understand what it feels like to be left out of basic human rights, like the right to marry the person you love and to have a family, or the right to serve openly in the military as the person you are. The Disability rights movement asks us to think about what it would be like if you just wanted to get from your home to library, but you find yourself unable to get your wheelchair over the big icy snowdrift in the intersection, or what it would feel like to have the waiter address your companion instead of you directly, as if you can’t think and speak for yourself.

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.

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