Imaginary People

Sunday, September 8, 2024 @ 10:30AM - Colorado

I extend empathy to inanimate objects almost by instinct. I remember talking to a friend about this when we were probably twelve years old. He admitted that if he is in bed and sees one sock on the floor, he worried it would be lonely and would get up, find its mate, and put them together on the floor.

I recently removed the batteries from a device, thinking, them dead, and disposed of them. Upon replacing them I realized the device was faulty, not the batteries. I retrieved the batteries I had discarded and apologized to them.

Empathy is a strange thing in that we all rely on it to survive, but it exists entirely within the mind of others. We love to make laws and punishments to try to pretend like this will prevent bad behavior, and it does a little bit, but the main reason someone doesn't just run over you in their car when you are crossing the street is that they can empathize with you. They might run over a dog, or a squirrel, or a frog, or a bug, or a soda can, it just depends on how their empathy works.

I think personally I extend empathy far and wide because I grew up around so many people who utterly failed to empathize. Many of the people I grew up around and under were entirely unempathetic to me, and it made me very aware that empathy is never a given. It isn't "built in" to everyone. It isn't always on. It may or may not be something you get from any given person at any given moment. Knowing that, I lean into extending empathy far and wide. I'm very aware of how many people out there need empathy, but don't get it, so I try to give it to everything. After all, if my mom couldn't always extend the same empathy to me that she should to a turtle, maybe I need to extend empathy to batteries, just in case "half-used battery" is how my brain perceives people.

Empathy is never a given, we need to cultivate it. First toward ourselves, and then outward toward everyone and eventually everything. Even the planet needs our empathy.