Meditations on Empathy (and how postsecret.com is making me a better person)
Empathy underpins everything good and
wonderful that happens on this pretty planet of ours. Cultivate an
ability to put yourself in the shoes of any other person, rich or
poor, lefty or fascist, ugly as a foot or pretty as a Cara
Delevingne, and you probably have this business of living cracked.
One fabulous website instilling good
empathic (or should that be empathetic? The eternal question...)
habits in all who visit is http://www.postsecret.com/,
'an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets
anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard'. Every Sunday
provides twenty or so privileged glimpses into the human heart; some
will break your heart, others will make you hoot with laughter, all
expose the myth that there is such a thing as normal.
Postsecret is doing a really valuable
thing; encouraging us to see beyond the boxes we put people in and
the labels we shove on them and to just see the human being
underneath. It is a lovely little reminder that many people are
terribly lonely or a little bit broken, that we all carry secrets,
and that what we see on the surface is never the full picture.
On
this, a tricky and divisive weekend in my part of the world, railing
against a 'them and us' culture and showing some love is all I ask of
the world.
(Brené Brown (of that fabulous TED
talk on 'The Power of Vulnerability') gave some rather dazzling
insights into the difference between sympathy and empathy, among
other things, in a recent lecture at the RSA which I would highly
recommend. Have your mind blown here.)
Here endeth the hippy rant.
PEACE LOVE AND HAPPINESS,
Ailbhe
x
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
