As a mental health counselor, a husband, a concerned citizen and a human being I have come to understand the value of living a life filled with empathy. Empathy essentially means being able to look at the world through a lens of someone else’s experience, being able to walk in the shoes of another in your mind and heart, and try to see how you might feel if you lived in this world in that person’s experience. One of the reasons this is so important is because without empathy we run the risk of assuming that our experience is the only experience, and that everyone else is a repetition of ourselves. People who don’t see things through others perspectives see only their own perspective on every other human being. In a way a lack of empathy reveals an ego that has grown beyond its means, consumed with itself and blind to the pain and joy and truth and worthiness of other’s experiences.
2020 has been a year that has challenged our ability for empathy at a crucial and core level. In mid-March our lives and livelihoods were threatened and turned upside down in one unexpected instant. On a personal level I was afraid… of getting sick, worried for my family and friends, worried about financial survival, and worried about what a shutdown in my home city of New York would mean for my life. The constant sounds of ambulance sirens served as a reminder of the massive sickness and death that was spreading throughout the city. The COVID pandemic truly brought about a level of fear, anxiety, depression, loss and grief that I have never seen before, on a global scale and in many different directions at the same time. The rates of infections and deaths disproportionately impacted minority communities due to systemic injustices in healthcare.
On top of all this, when the brutal police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor made national headlines I felt a deep sense of grief for these precious lives that were unfairly taken, but also anger for the systems that protect killers and allow them to continue to walk free. My husband and I are proud to have marched in support of the Black Lives Matter movement to bring about a change towards racial justice. Although I am not at high risk of experiencing police brutality as a beneficiary of white and male privileges, it feels vitally important to me that I use my voice and privileged identities to shed awareness on the need for racial justice in America.
Empathy is rooted in not living in another person’s perspective, not knowing how they feel, having never lived their experience, but being able to view their perspective by putting your own ego, your own sense of self, aside and learning to see the world through another’s eyes. We can use our own experiences to inform us on something that we have not lived. I think I may have been so emotionally impacted by the highly publicized victims of police brutality this year because of my own experience of losing a brother, and seeing my parents lose a child. Although the circumstances are incredibly different, losing my brother Tyler to suicide informed a lot of my understanding of how horribly painful it is to lose a loved one under circumstances that are unnecessary and preventable.
Fighting for justice does not bring back the loved ones we have lost, as I have learned all too well on my personal journey of healing from grief. However, it is worth every bit of energy that it takes from us because we are helping other people avoid finding themselves in the same situation. We are ensuring that other sisters, brothers, moms and dads won’t have to go through the same losses. Participating in the Black Lives Matter movement as a nonblack ally is an act of empathy, and in taking those steps I hope to encourage other white and nonblack people to get involved. As a gay man I can say that having straight allies has been vital to my wellbeing. When we see members of our society being treated unfairly, those of us who get a better treatment have a responsibility to use our platforms to speak out and advocate for change. We cannot change where we have been but we can help to shape the direction of the future.
It has been confusing, triggering and bewildering for me to see the lack of compassion that many members or our society have for minority groups. Seeing guns pulled on peaceful protestors, and then seeing this hateful action being rewarded by those in power with a platform at the highest levels of our nation has been disturbing and enraging. None of it makes sense to me, but I believe it comes back to a lack of empathy. It starts early, it is rooted in our education, both in families as well as school, and it comes from the images and ideas we get exposed to in the media. Through entertainment we are able to live through the eyes of fictional characters and it shapes our understanding of the world, our place in it, and where others not like us fit in as well.
Being a member of a majority group often insulates us further into a space of self-absorption as the stories, images, voices and platforms we are exposed to continue to reflect back our own experience, representation and worldview. For example, as a white man I can turn on the TV or, in pre-COVID days I could have gone to the movie theater and see countless representations of the perspectives and feelings of people who look like me. This doesn’t just stay on the screen, as the media we take in impacts the way we feel about the world around us, and about ourselves. It also has real-world implications, as we are living in a moment when government is moving to impose a rule of law that assumes we are all the same, and those who do not or cannot conform don’t matter anyway.
If there is anything that we can take away from the harsh lessons in 2020 it is that the fight for justice is ongoing and the need for strong communities that take care of each other is higher than ever. It is important to take the time to think critically about ourselves and why we think and feel the way we do. It is just as important to think about others feelings and try to understand where that comes from. It may seem like an impossible bridge to gap – between the self and the other – but as human beings we are all connected and can come around to seeing the world a different way if we are open to truly, compassionately listening to each other. What you find out about yourself and the world around you when you listen may surprise you, it might make you uncomfortable, but it is essential to your personal growth and the growth of our society.