True Dat

A funny thing happened between October 2009 and July 2011. I lived at the mercy of so many people and at the same time lived at the truest core of myself I'd ever experienced. It continued a musing on empathy in deep ways.

Empathy--"the ability to understand and share the feelings of others". ( according to Wikipedia) It's the opposite of narcissism which is pathological self absorbtion .

About thirty years ago I spent a lot of time learning about attachment disorder. It's the cycle that happens essentially in the first six months of life that makes empathy possible or impossible for a person to experience. Important stuff.

Throw in a news clip I watched ( on my smartphone of course) about a Vietnam Vet and a Viet Cong officer having a reunion saying to each other 'We were enemies on paper" and I thought to myself, what an affront to all those families who had sons and daughters who died in that war.

Couldn't they have decided this BEFORE the war and just forgotten all that killing and maiming part.

I think of the teachers in this world who have classrooms crammed with students and little if any time to teach let alone express life changing empathy and wonder if maybe there is a way to fund education so enough empathy is caught to change every kind of lifestyle that can happen.

When I was growing up, the news story that impacted my life the most was Kitty Genovese. She was attacked in the middle of the night and stabbed repeatedly over the course of a half hour crying out for help. The media reported 38 people had seen or heard the event and did nothing. Later an investigation said it was only a dozen. Only.

Empathy and codependence seem to be wrapped up together sometimes. I am a caring person who is not afraid to get involved. Yet recently I was reminded of how difficult it is to set limits with people with dependency issues. By their very wounded nature it feels like abandonment and frustration to the extreme to not receive attention or be in total control.

Yet, how do we decide who to care for. If I , because of my background, have the ability to crawl inside the heart of a person with mental illness and express empathy, does it wound me to get that close? Therapists have those chairs set apart for a reason dontchaknow.

This I know. Being in relationship with people in loving and caring ways will sometimes break my heart, sometimes overwhelm me and sometimes... the best of times... feed my soul in ways I could only dream would happen in this lifetime. I , a person of faith, have to believe it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Love

Deborah