Gaining Empathy and Steps Toward Community

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What if?

These words, I think, are the basis of empathy. At least that's what I think today. And empathy, to me, is vital to community. Whether it's across the street, a few blocks over, an entire city, the whole culture, the whole wide world - empathy is the critical ingredient that makes us human, and urges us to care. At the root of it is our individual capacity to see ourselves in the other person's situation, to put ourselves in their shoes.

What if?

It's the simple conversation that takes place in the recesses of the mind, silently, many times a day. Informal and constant, it might perhaps be the voice of conscience. Whatever name you'd like to pin to its chest, to me it's rooted in decency as well as in an aspiration to be better, to make our lives better. And in so doing to lift the tent and enable those around us to also enjoy better lives.

Maybe that's a bit complicated. Maybe the crux of the matter is that empathy moves us simply to be nice. Or to be nicer.

Or maybe it's a bit more accurate to say that it inspires us to be more gentle.

What if?

Sounds a little like the golden rule. You know, do unto others as you would them do unto you. But the golden rule alone doesn't fully work for me. It smacks a little too much like our momentary exit from the State of Nature that Thomas Hobbes talks about. And my sense is that empathy runs deeper than ephemeral self-interest.

The night before last Jackie was uprooted from his sleep by a nagging and persistent cough. Somewhere between 2 and 3 in the morning Nicole and I woke with Jacks and as she scoured natural healing books Jackson and I settled in for a long hot shower to dissipate whatever was causing his distress. With his cough a somewhat leashed in he and I headed to the couch with a cup of echinacea tea and Pinocchio. The course of sleep eventually made its way to us, with Jackson's cough no longer nagging him.

The cough doesn't seem too serious. But waking up with him in the small of the night prompted more than a few "what ifs" and these musings galvanized a deeper understanding, a broader empathy and a fuller gentleness emanating from me.

And more than a little tiredness from being up half the night.

The Susan Boyle Moment

Another trigger for my "What if" moment came as I drove up Lake Shore Drive listening to NPR Wednesday or Thursday. It was a brief report and audio clip of Susan Boyle as she entered the realm of the phenomenal. Boyle, in case you're not aware, is a 40 something woman from a tiny hamlet in the English countryside who donned her "going to the city" finest and some sensible shoes to appear on a televised talent show.

While not many if any folks would consider Susan anything but homely and for all intents and purposes it looked like it would be a perfect moment for Simon Cowell, one of the show's panelists, to exhibit what can only be termed anti-empathy. But it turned out much different.

It turned out much better.

Click here to see Susan Boyle sing

Susan, with a singular eyebrow traced across a forehead that she said has never been pecked by a non-family member, opened her mouth and mesmerized the tv audience (and now millions of people around the world) with a sweet and full voice rich with passion and imbued with a lifetime of things unsaid but not unfelt.

Here's the thing with Susan Boyle. What she did was incongruous - it was unexpected. But then she did it and a dread anticipation that met her arrival was replaced by something much kinder and nobler. It was replaced by celebration and, I hope, a pause. A pause to remember to insert a moment between the cynical or harsh judgement with something softer, something tinged with empathy.

Which reminds me of a teaching that I associate with Ram Dass

"And I am that too."

Remembering to Forget and Forgetting to Remember

That works for me.

And though I often forget this teaching and I wander away from the softer truths of "what if," I am brought out of the so-called fog by looking into the eyes of my children or contemplating the magnificence of my wife or Susan Boyle moments when something completely unexpected occurs and a random act of kindness ensues.

And so is there empathy and thus community.

By the way, feel free to tap into my philosophical musings in person by stopping by my open house from noon-2p at 3118 Sheffield. (Or visit other pieces of Chicago real estate represented by The Real Estate Lounge Chicago team that include an Andersonville condo for sale at 1218 Carmen from 11.30-1.30 and a Sauganash sfh for sale at 4353 Hollywood from noon-2p. Or tap my shoulder to talk by reaching me at 773.848.9241.