Hope for Empathy

"I don't know whether your heart ever necessarily changes, but time changes the way that you perceive the world. And you just hope it gives you more empathy and all those other things." -- Mark Knopfler

"Why are you so nice to me?"

This is the question that our 5-year-old granddaughter posed to her Grandmother recently. For some reason, after my wife told me this, the inquiry hit me at a profound level, and I wondered to myself what it was that she was really asking? Was she trying to determine her place in the scheme of existence? Did she have some need to determine why this adult would patiently sit next to her, and read, and just express a caring and loving attitude to her? Is she measuring her worth in some way?

I know that I probably shouldn't jump right to all the existential issues of a simple question, but I can't seem to help myself. It is the inner anthropologist, sociologist, and psychologist in me.

Yet, hearing of this gentle child's probing question, this desire at measuring another's perspectives felt like the wrong approach to me, until I considered that this little one was just expressing--or displaying--beginning empathy, or at least trying to understand her world through empathetic eyes and heart. She was stretching her imaginations beyond herself, taking in another's thoughts and identifying with a perceived emotion, in this case, my wife's expression of "nice" to her. These are two of the core habits of empathy, in my opinion, processing another's thoughts and then identifying (yet not sympathizing) with them. 

This little one was drawing on assorted elements of her brief existence, those of inborn aptitude, social experience, personal history, patience and motivation in order to understand the people of her world, as well as how those people perceive of her.

I believe the exploration our granddaughter is starting, will lead to a balance in her need to successfully relate to others. And I would like to hope that this can be a small yet significant step in giving our children's children a chance at achieving what can only be accomplished through validation of genuine caring.

The Unreliability of Memory

"We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and re-categorized with every act of recollection."  

- Oliver Sacks

There seems to be a great deal of controversy these days focused on believing or not believing the remembered experiences of people. And for those who are dealing with traumatic events in their past, this must be very frustrating to them. Frustrating indeed. For if we believe, or at least try to understand, what Dr. Sachs was saying in this quote, making any sense of the past should be viewed as problematic. To depend on what we have remembered many years ago has to be challenged by anyone who might have looked at what neuroscience has shown to be true.

Now I would never discount a memory with corroborating information about something that has happened in the past. With the new technologies of the hand-held phone that has every type of recording device on it, a memory can be called up many years later and reviewed by the person with audio and visual to support a claim. However, in my past it was unlikely that such evidence of support existed outside of those rare individuals who were consistent, dedicated, and truthful diarists.

Getting over the belief that human memory is somehow consistent with the working of a video recorder is something that needs to be considered if we are to fairly weigh and interpret memory. Leading psychologists such as Dr. Sachs have found that memories are reconstructed each time that they are "played' or recalled and that many fragments, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, are filled-in with convenient or inaccurate details.

So it is with great difficulty that I find myself doubting testimonials of those in an accusatory role as well of those who are denying accusations. In my humble opinion, trust should not be placed in people's memories when they are offering corroborating testimony as eyewitnesses as well. In these instances, we human beings are trying to reassemble what has been imprinted in a brains neurons. However, those neurons have been colored, altered and reinterpreted by life experience, trauma, physical changes, psychological impacts, and the list goes on.

The one time I sat on a jury it was one of the most awful experience in my life, and this was even before I put much thought in things like the reliability of memory.

So how will we judge or decide about a issue or person when faced with testimony relying on a human memory from the past. I don't have an easy answer. Go with the gut? I just don't know. 

Surprised by a sound

“Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” – Boris Pasternak

Nature is full of surprises. Visionary ones. Tactile ones. Auditory ones. Even those that would fall under the category of spiritual ones. In addition, the best part of the surprise is the element of them being unexpected as well as personally impactful.

When my wife and I were kayaking up and down a new stretch of a river in the upper peninsula of Michigan, one of the more prominent elements were the many beaver houses found along the shoreline. The intricate building designs of them and the carefully “paved with branches” runways that led down the river embankments were interesting to observe. You could see the ways that their work was subtly altering the riverway.

However, the most surprising discovery happened as we were floating back down the river after the upstream paddle. When drifting back, the trip becomes much more silent, as paddling is not as necessary to move with the current doing the hard work of moving the kayaks. As I drifted by one of the many beaver houses situated in a bend in the river, I heard a faint squeaking that seemed to be emanating from the shoreline, more specifically, from under the piled branches of the beaver house on my right. Paddling in reverse toward the sound I had passed, I slowly drifted back past the spot and again heard the sound. Emanating from deep beneath the branches, was the sound of beaver kits communicating whatever it is that beaver kits communicate to their parents. Responding to those sounds, were a deep, gruff response from what I assumed must have been one of the adults.

Beaver pencil sketch by Mitch Smith.

I indicated to my wife who was drifting down behind me to come over and take a listen. 

Together, we held our kayaks in the spot alongside the beaver dam and listened to the delightful and surprisingly cute sounds of nature, sounds that my wife and I had never heard before. We were not sure that what we were hearing was actually beavers, but it made sense that it fit the observed reality of what would live in a beaver dam (Note: Google confirmed the sounds as beavers when a nature show was found regarding the life, times and “sounds” that make a beaver a beaver).

This experience became one of the most profound of the trip; a most cherished and remembered memory. My wife and I lingering along the shore, overhearing nature, entranced by a new experience, and surprised by another of nature’s numerous wonders.

Where, When and Why of Our Thinking

"Choose not to be harmed, and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed, and you haven't been."
--Marcus Aurelius

I had to read and meditate on the famous stoic Marcus Aurelius's wisdom for quite a while to sort out his thinking and how I could apply it to my life. It came to me slowly what he was driving at. It was the principle of taking everything personally while at the same time looking at what is said or done to you as a positive opportunity. 

Yes, everything good or bad is a positive growth opportunity.

After all, if you allow someone or something to make you angry, sad or worried, you have taken what you can control and gave the power to them. Transferred your personal agency to another. Sure, it feels good to yell at the person that cut you off in traffic, be angry at the baby crying in the restaurant or just saddened by hurtful words. Maybe this is the opportunity to look at our reactions, confront our feelings, and look at them in a new, less-painful light.

First, I would challenge us to put ourselves in the other person's shoes. I know that most of us have probably heard this a thousand times before, but if you are anything like me, it doesn't seem to stick very well, like worn out Velcro. I've taken to grabbing one of three words to apply to stuff like this: where, when or why.

I would apply any one of these three words to any of the previous examples. Applying my logic to someone who has said something hurtful to me, I would ask the 'Where' verb of myself: "Where does that person want this to go?'; "Where did they learn to act like this?"; or, "Where inside themselves are they suffering?"

Or you could choose 'When.' "When were they hurt?"

And lastly, "What can I do about it so that I don't suffer?"

Doing this for myself has been a rich experience, and it has been an opportunity for me to grow as a person, and be much, much more empathetic with others. I also have come to think of where what, and when as three basic questions that can help in the understanding of people and what has shaped them, drives them and ultimately leads to the greater reflective observation of their unique, troubled, challenging, wonderful, varied story.

Maybe that crying baby will grow up to be a doctor that will help cure a cancer, that person who cut you off was rushing to a hospice to say goodbye to a dying relative, or the person saying hurtful things may be expressing unconscious expressions of the hurt that was visited on them that they may not understand.