The Loss of Empathy

The word empathy comes from two Greek words, em-pathos: literally to feel with, even to suffer with, another. It's similar to the word compassion (which comes from two Latin words) but some linguists say empathy is the stronger and more particular word of the two. It's about the ability to identify with someone else's pain. It's the antidote to narcissism and self-centeredness. (See The Parable of the Grinch, by the prophet Seuss.)

Based on my very unscientific reading of Facebook posts and the comments on those posts about immigrant children being taken from their mother's arms and placed in cages, empathy seems to be in short supply in some quarters. You can watch Corey Lewandowski and judge for yourself. I won't even provide a link to the vile Ann Coulter. And when Rachel Maddow did show empathy and break down on the air, the NRA went after her. (I also made the huge mistake of reading some of the comments being posted by trolls that suggest she was acting.)

In her poem, "Of the Empire," Mary Oliver begins by saying that "we will be known as the culture that feared death and adored power." She concludes that history will look upon us and note that...

our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

The ability to experience empathy can be cultivated and taught. We can encourage soft-heartedness. We can pray. We can listen. We can pay attention to the needs of others. We can work at loving God and neighbor.

But to be very honest, it's exhausting. At least it is for me. I understand the desire for some to just turn it all off and to stop reading the news (especially when it's so hard to even know what is true) and to just think happy thoughts. Focusing on what is happening in our country is, quite literally, depressing.

I empathize.

And yet, I keep blogging and talking and engaging and trying to stay informed. Because it's not a game. Because real people's live are being harmed on a daily basis. There is no undoing the scars already created by the terror for children who have been taken from their parents at the border. And when I hear someone say, "get over it - kids in our own country get taken from their parents when there is a divorce, or when a parent goes to jail" - all I feel is horror. I wonder what kind of monster is uttering these Fox News talking points and if it's a person I thought I knew, I actually feel physically ill. I feel like crying like Rachel Maddow.

There is no doubt some gaslighting going on in that kind of response. But even if we take it at face value, can we not also feel the pain for children who have had a parent incarcerated or suffer through a messy divorce. Do we want to increase that kind of pain in the world so that even more children are traumatized? We do all realize, don't we, that these events leave scars that may never heal?

The heart is hard these days, for sure, and at least two-sizes too small. Perhaps the first order of business is to listen more closely to the children and to allow empathy to grow and soften our hearts. If their voices make us cry, then that is at least a starting place. Only then will we be able to tackle the hard political challenges that we face as a nation in serious trouble.