Empathic Musings

A funny thing happened yesterday, and it has prompted me to write a new blog post about a subject near and dear to my heart. I was talking with my parents on Skype, as I’m wont to do on Sunday afternoons, and my mother was telling me about how she used a “big word” that day at work and was very proud and excited to tell me about it. She laughed and suggested I should teach her some new “big words” that she could use from time to time. Naturally, my first thought was Ernest Hemingway’s famous rebuttal to William Faulkner:

Does he really think big emotions come from big words?

That said, I am a bit of a logophile, so I do have a penchant for admiring the savory goût of an unusual word. In fact, just a few days prior to my chat with my mother, I had raided my classroom for tools I could use in my ESL classes, and therein, I found a promising old box of “English Vocabulary Cards,” proudly containing 1,000 useful words.

Well, that box had been sitting on my desk up until Sunday, virtually unopened. But the moment seemed to proscribe its perusal, so I suggested my mother and I dive into its contents together and see what we’d find. I lifted the dusty lid and reached somewhere into the middle of the cards, ultimately selecting an unpresuming one from their midst. I was shocked at the word I randomly selected!

Why so surprised? Well, empathy has long been one of my favorite words and a concept I often discuss with people. Truth be told, I think it may be the single most important faculty we have in order to be good human beings. Here’s how the card defines empathy:

Of course, I’m not much of a person for the metaphysical or to think about crazy ideas such as fate or destiny. But I have to admit, it seemed rather fitting that, of 1,000 cards, I’d randomly be drawn toward this one, wonderful word. Yes, pure coincidence, I know. But still, cool.

So, what’s the big deal about empathy? I first began thinking about it in college, when I came to realize that a writer’s most useful tool is empathy. If you cannot actually experience the emotions—good or bad—of another person, as vividly in your mind and heart as that person experiences them, then it becomes a great challenge to ever effectively (and affectively!) write about the human experience. One of my favorite examples is the following poem, “She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” by the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Chances are, if you’ve spent any real time talking about literature with me, I’ve suffered you to hear a reading. So, here it is:

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

In all honesty, every time I read this poem, I feel a shudder down my spine when I reach the final two lines. My cheeks grow flush and I feel a distinct flutter in my chest. That’s how powerful, how affective, this poem is. Wordsworth is famous for his slightly cryptic “Lucy poems,” and this is by far the finest. He praises this girl he loves, this girl whom nobody ever bothered to notice, with the most fittingly delicate imagery. But the kicker is that she has died, which has had no impact on anyone—expect for its having made all the difference in the world to the poet. He loved her, but he never got the chance to tell her. Lovely, simple, and harrowing. This poem is about unprofessed love and untimely death, and if your sense of empathy is sharp enough, you will feel (even if only for a mere moment) the exact heartache of the bard. Simply put, empathy allows us to connect and share. Empathy necessarily requires creative thinking and a certain openness with one’s sentimental side. Yet while it demands that openness, it also enhances it in the process—it acts as a cyclical process. The more you allow yourself to connect with people, the easier it will become, the more you’ll want to do so, and the more open others will be to empathizing with you. Instant karma.

I invite everyone who reads this to consider how open they are to feeling empathy toward fellow human beings on a daily basis. You’ll perhaps find it remarkably refreshing!