A Matter of Empathy

Empathy is the ability or the capacity to identify with or "understand" the position, the "feelings" of another. I think it's something we all have to some degree (except for maybe the real social cretins - serial killers, etc). I realize that from a very young age, that empathy has been a guiding principle of mine ("but for the grace of god, go I"). It may have been passed down to me from my father, my mother, it may have been programmed in my genes, who knows? I first really felt it in Catholic grade school. There was a kid, with glasses, braces, frequent nose-bleeds, who just stood out in the crowd, (kind of like Jerzy Kosinski's "Painted Bird). Some kids went out of their way to torment him, I guess to make themselves feel superior, to show that they were stronger, to show they weren't like him. Lack of empathy is great if you want to divide into "us" and "them" camps. This always sickened me. I went out of my way to be nice to this kid, partly because I identified with him. I was one of those quiet kids, who really just wanted to be invisible, I often wasn't noticed, which is how I liked it. I wasn't really friends with "Nosebleed," but I'd help him up when he fell down, or kind of shielded him when it looked like he was stepping into trouble. Later I had my own problem with bullies, there was one particular kid who loved to sit on me and make me eat dirt. Finally, improbably, one afternoon I landed a lucky punch square on the bully's nose and he never bothered me again, but I never forgot being on the dirt end of the equation. This is a long way to my thought that I still see the world through this prism. If there's someone down and out, some underdog, some prisoner being tortured in some secret room or some street person feeling the the sharp end of a stick, like Steinbeck's Tom Joad, "I am there." I guess I'm basically a "bleeding heart." I wear this label with honor. At the same time, I believe I must have a steely resolve to work towards a better world. A world where empathy is a sign of strength, not of weakness.