09-13-00 Eastern Echo

Our response to life's unfairness: empathy

Bad things happen to good people. Fair? No. But it's life. My friend's ex-husband is slowly breaking his ties with their young daughter. Unable, or unwilling, to fulfill his obligations as a parent, he's basically walking out of her life. If life was fair, this wonderful child would have a father who couldn't fathom his life without her, who understood that fathering a child wasn't a part-time commitment he could relinquish when he got bored or overwhelmed. Life isn't fair, and a child suffers. How will she bear it, growing up without her father? Who can say? Many of us survive the absence (physical or emotional) of a parent and manage to grow-up perfectly well-adjusted. But that doesn't soothe a child's wounded heart. If life was fair, a very talented friend of mine wouldn't have been "downsized" out of her job just weeks after buying a new house. She wouldn't have found out she needed an additional six thousand to connect to the city sewers. She wouldn't have to cope with the fact her father has been readmitted to the hospital just weeks after undergoing major heart surgery. But she has to cope. She has to find a new job, some fast cash, and the emotional energy to deal with her father's illness. How will she manage? How do any of us manage? Like someone once said, "What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger." Because we are a social people, we seek out the comfort of others during our times of distress. We tell our tale of woe to anyone who will listen; our need to pick at the scab of our anguish is strong and difficult to ignore. Often we feel better just by telling our narrative of injury. Sharing the pain seems to help.  Learning to handle adversity is a necessity of life. Without something to struggle against we would be merely cattle, waiting for the butcher's ax to take us to sweet oblivion. Without pain, we wouldn't be motivated to make the world a better place. We'd sit around in our happy existence and write really bad poetry. Adversity forces us consider our true selves, it makes us dig deep within and find strength we didn't know we possessed. It can make us cry, it can send us down a path we had not considered. It can change our lives. And on the other side of the coin, when the pain is not our own but a friend's or even a total stranger's, there is often a response that moves us just as surely as if the pain had been our own. Empathy. We can't help but feel, to some degree, the pain of others. Without empathy, we would live a solitary existence. Empathy is a social necessity. If we cannot, in some way, relate to our fellow human beings on an emotional level then we are alone, truly alone. Empathy, too, can change our lives. It can force us to examine an aspect of our lives, or our society, that needs to be changed to fit us more comfortably. Our empathy for others can have surprising power. It can inspire us to take action. It can help us to understand someone better and learn something about ourselves in the process. But what we learn from adversity and empathy are life lessons we cannot ignore. These two things, the need to struggle against injustice and the ability to feel empathy for others, are essential for personal growth. Personal growth doesn't come cheap. We pay in pain. All we can hope is that we learn from the pain, act on the pain, and become better people in the process.