Imagine toward empathy

I hadn’t slept much the night before and my day had been one of the extra busy ones.  So, the sofa and I joined forces for a late afternoon nap, which we sometimes do.

I was awakened by the telephone answering machine from an epic dream of a storm and a fire, which hubby and I nonchalantly conversed through.  I was in that degree of awake that I’ve experienced before where I don’t really know where I am and only vaguely familiar with who I am or what I’m supposed to be doing at this moment.

Imagine feeling like that all the time.  Then you might have a glimpse of the life of someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

This reminded me of our days teaching at a college in New Mexico many years ago.  The college sponsored various programs of community support, one of which was awareness of disability.

How to develop compassion?  Let’s step outside ourselves for an experiment in empathy.  Play a game called “If.”  “How would I feel if…?”

I recall seeing an unusual number of wheelchairs on campus, one day.  Then I became aware of lots of blindfolded people walking about with support persons and white sticks at the ready.

Then there were the workshops showing us visuals of how it is to try to see through a cataract.  It was truly a fog.  We were taught empathy through those programs, given the gift of imagining what it might be like “to live like that.”

I don’t know why Beatles songs frequently come into my mind when I write, but here we are“Imagine all the people sharing all the world…. You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one.  I hope some day you’ll join us and the world will live as one….” (John Winston Lennon, released 1971, Imagine).

I think, more often than we would admit, we imagine ourselves as someone else.  We wonder what we would do with the wealth of Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey, the power of the president, the popularity and influence of our favorite celebrity, the admiration from the masses, like Diana, Princess of Wales, etc.

These are the exciting things we might imagine, a dream job, a dream relationship or dream adventure.  Who hasn’t imagined their dream car, dream house or dream body?

But what about imagining toward empathy: the nightmares of losing your sustenance, your abilities to think and reason, sing and dance or even ambulate; losing your child, your spouse or best friend.  Have you ever imagined how you would live if cast into poverty through no fault of your own; how you would cope if you must one day awaken to a life of constant pain or an addiction you can’t shake?

Do we ever imagine how we would handle the amputation of a limb, blindness, deafness, mental decline, paralysis and phantom pain?  Do we ever practice in our minds, being a social pariah, despised by many, having no friends or family or paralyzed with fear or anxiety?

Do you ever imagine “walking a mile in my shoes?” (Billy Connolly, Joe South or Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird) Literally?  Again, with those exercises in empathy, I’ve walked in well-worn shoes of someone else’s who had a distinctly different gait, (feet tilted inward – pronation, versus tilted outward – supination), and it’s super weird, hard to walk.  The experience is a bit like wearing Asian wooden shoes or glass slippers, Cinderella.  Comfortable, it is not.

Several things not included in my birth plan way back in the day, was more than twenty-four hours of labor, a 3 a.m. walk through our neighborhood wearing my velour purple robe, carrying a wine glass filled with grape juice and assisted by midwives; oh, and greeted by a cruising police officer who escaped as quickly as he arrived.  I often wondered why I didn’t have flip flops ready, to support my severely swollen feet, for transport to the hospital with preeclampsia.  Then there was the emergency cesarean section.

 I wore my husband’s well-worn tennis shoes.  It was a rushed decision, and not my best one.  But they were the only shoes I could get onto my thickening paws, in a hurry.

I can’t really know what it’s like to be in your shoes, unless I imagine it.  I can exercise empathy, by trying to imagine what you’re going through.  Even then it’s not the same, but it’s close.

“I get it now.  That’s why they do that, say that, behave like that, feel that way.”  It doesn’t excuse them and I may not agree with them, but I understand them when I exercise empathy.

Try empathy, unless you’re a Narcissist, who cannot for the life of you, conceive of being inside someone else’s skin.  Then there’s God, who in Mary Fishback Powers’ poem, Footsteps in the Sand, carries us through the difficult times.  We could try imagining our way toward empathy by putting on some uncomfortable shoes, not our own and carrying some folks through their rough times; pretending we’re Jesus, just for a moment.

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