Empathy

I read a book. It was called “Empathy”. It was written by Sarah Schulman. “You are suffering from empathy” one character says to the other at one point. The disease of caring. More than one meaning. Empathy isn’t valued as highly as it should be, the encouragement to become thick skinned narcissists is a strong draw. To function adequately in a world where the best ideas and minds are primarily used in situations and actions that create mass amounts of pain for mass amounts of people, to have empathy is in fact to suffer. To give yourself over, pass yourself along to others, hands open, palms wide, is asking for pain. But offering kindness shouldn’t be viewed as a request for pain.

You suffer from an illness, it afflicts you and affects your body, your perception of the world. Empathy, caring for others, becomes something bad, something to avoid, something that only brings wrongness. The act of empathizing is often solely associated with being with someone in their pain. As if you can’t be with someone in their joy, calm, contentment.

At many glances, through windows, heart, life is, and can be suffering, so much. If the word is suffering, is painful and awful, then to empathize at all, with anything, with anyone, with any situation, is necessarily suffering.

But I have to hopefully disagree, and say that there is empathy beyond sadness.We just don’t recognize that shared beauty is an experience of empathy. Yes, some might view my ongoing bouts of empathy as unfortunate and unnecessary. I say they keep me sane and whole, while boundaries and barriers of ice are shocks that don’t need to be so sharp.
Anyways, “Empathy” by Sarah Schulman was a great book to read, a surprise book, because I didn’t actually think I’d be able able to make it through it-I’ve been having trouble with the book reading lately. Headaches and can’t focus, no interest. So, to find a book that is poetic and realistic, more than a little gut wrenching, and yet inherently easily readable is an astounding thing. It’s a novel, but not. It’s a love story, and a lost story. It’s important and lovely. And there are some good essays and prefaces in it, too.