This morning, I woke up to news of this year's 250th mass shooting. I'm sure many of you understand my feelings about guns, and since that is the case, I do not want to spend my time and energy explaining why I think common-sense gun laws are necessary. Instead, I want to discuss the virtue that will allow us as a nation, and us as a species, to move forward into a brighter future.
In our political climate, it is difficult to discuss exactly why the extreme events of this weekend happened. Many blame mental illness. Others blame a lack of protective laws. Still others blame hateful rhetoric that is unchecked and unabashed. Personally, I see a fundamental part of humanity missing from our society.
Atticus Finch tries to teach his daughter, Scout, about this virtue in Harper Lee's classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." He says, "If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
Euripides said, "When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him."
This virtue that I feel is missing from the speech and actions of many people today is Empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It is being able to understand how the family of the 4-month-old child from El Paso feels. It is being able to understand how a mother with children from Honduras feels at the US border. It is being able to understand how a middle-aged man feels when his perceived rights seem threatened. It is mourning with those who mourn and comforting those in need of comfort.
In many cases, pride takes the place of empathy. We refuse to understand how another feels because we refuse to accept their feelings as valid. Empathy is driven out when we start to take away other's humanity. In Hitler's Germany, minority groups were separated from the whole by alienating rhetoric. We must be careful to not let such divisions separate us from our humanity or empathy. No matter where we are born, what color our skin is, or what dialect we speak, we are all members of the same species, and we all live on a shared planet. When you really think about it, none of us are that different.
Alfred Adler said, "Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another." We need to make a greater effort to regain our humanity through empathy.
Thanks for reading.
"If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end." -Bayard Rustin.