Empathy

I was born with an extra dose of empathy for the plight of others. Of this, I am certain. My early life was lived out among the downtrodden. Whether they saw themselves as such I cannot know, but I felt their emotional pain. It was incredibly difficult to live with it, hour by hour and day by day, but I had no choice in the matter.

I suspect that I was seen quite simply as a shy child, an introvert. There's truth to that. Whenever I could I stayed in my room, surrounded by books. When I did venture out of my room, except of course to go to school, I went to ballet lessons and piano lessons. My body was more nimble than my fingers and it is dancing that became my true love.

If you think about it for a moment, these are fairly solitary activities. Of course, ballets have many participants but in your body it is just you dancing in sync with others. At the piano, or any instrument, you must delve into your inner life if you are to play well.

I know this not from experiencing it, since I was not a talented piano player. I know it because when my daughter was playing her flute, which she did very well, I sat in a few times as a musicologist took her through pieces of music in intricate detail, perhaps alerting her to a string of notes relating to a caged bird. It was then that I realized that music was so much more than the notes played well. Music comes from the soul and instruments must be played with the soul.

Back to the discomfort of living with those in emotional distress. Each night when I went to the kitchen for my dinner, a dinner not prepared by or eaten with my parents, I had to pass by people, men and women who were drowning their sorrows in beer. I felt that sorrow. I'd feel it like I was feeling sorrow myself and this was very difficult. Obviously, a child does only what one can do, and thus I built a defensive wall that would keep out the sorrow as much as possible. I tried not to look. I smiled and said hello in as disengaged a manner as possible.

The day came when my family was moving on. The establishment was closed. The door bell rang and I must have gone to the door to answer it. Standing there, tall, sad looking and carrying a satchel was a patron I recognized. I told him I would fetch my mother. I returned to the door with her and I heard him give her his best wishes. He wanted to thank her for her kindness over the years.He said that he would miss us and being able to frequent the business daily. I felt his pain. I felt his loss. I still do.

This capacity to feel other people's emotions can make crowds very difficult, going to school to volunteer very difficult. It can make making the right decisions in life very difficult. I have far too much empathy. It is my heart and not my head that wins. A psychologist would definitely identify this as a problem. The heart and head don't have to operate in a 50/50 way, but too far in either direction is a problem. I know this.

Every now and again, I find myself actually saying out loud to myself words like, 'This is a test. This must be a test.' I say this because my empathy fails me in the moment and I wonder if this is some sort of fault in the empathic system. If I have such a healthy dose of it, why can't I feel anything? Why has my empathic system, my heart, shut down?

Lately, I have been very very quiet. January in Australia is slow anyway but I have done little more than read and write, walk, yoga lessons, cook, meditate and breathe deeply. I water the garden and indoor pot plants. I sometimes nap. I do the laundry and such. But, it's the smallest of lives, deliberately small for now

It's like I am saving energy for listening and noting. It is like I am being observant to hear the beating heart, my beating heart. It's some sort of shift which I am not truly aware of in the mind space. I do wonder if this soul of mine, a timeless soul, dwelling within this particular body form, is insisting that I take this time to listen to my own heart; to tend to my own heart.