Empathy

In light of my whopping sob story from earlier this week, I'd like to lead my readers on an exercise (to be carried out over the weekend).

I'd like you to, if your schedule permits, examine five strangers. They may be someone you see at the mall, or in the car next to you at a red light, or walking down the street, or riding the bus with you. Anyone anywhere so long as you do not know anything about their backstory or history.

Now examine their facial expression. Examine their body language. What emotions are they sending out through their physical appearance and actions.

Take those emotions and write them down. It can be many, or it can be as few as one depending on the extremity of the emotion exhibited.

You do not have to do all five. Additionally, you could do more if you find the exercise to be fascinating. However many you can fit comfortably into your schedule is fine.
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Now I'd like you to imagine a real-world and plausible set of reasons as to why this stranger might be exhibiting these emotions. Take care to live these situations in your mind as vividly as possible. Feel the emotions welling up inside you as a result of your imagination. Feel the emotions that you saw on this stranger. Be this person- just for a few minutes, let their life envelope you. Their troubles, their joys, their boredom, their fatigue, their anxieties and fears, their surprise and contentment.
What kind of friends might they have?
Are they in a relationship?
Is it a happy relationship?
What's their family like?
Where are they going?
Where have they left?
What do they want? What are they looking for?
What might make their day better? Or worse?
(Try for non-generic answers if possible)

There are some for whom this exercise may be more difficult, and that's okay. I encourage you to look for people exhibiting some really obvious emotions- someone crying on a bench, or perhaps a child screaming alone. Someone skipping down the sidewalk, or a couple holding hands.

If you think you can handle the more subtle strangers, pick someone who's barely displaying any visible emotions. Dig deep and try to find some hint as to how they feel.



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This exercise is not about being accurate.
This exercise is not about making others any more or less than they are.
This exercise is about empathy.

This exercise is simply about understanding the unfathomable unimaginable amount of worlds that can and do exist in the people around us. We distance ourselves from people by nature unless we know them- and for good reason. If we stopped to take in everything about every person, we would go insane and become overloaded with information and stimuli. But it's good to step in that pool of emotion- just to remind yourself what it feels like.

Each person that you pass on the sidewalk, each driver rushing by, and every face you see has behind it a developmental history as complex and long as your own, but so fundamentally different for each person.
Think about the enormous number of memories you have, the number of connections you've made, the people you've seen, the fears you have, and the dreams you keep. Think about how much is there. Now remind yourself that each and every other human on this planet has something similar inside them too.

It's a daunting task, but it gives you some perspective.

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Waddles