Empathize or Die
“We all have our broken pieces – emotionally, spiritually. In this life, nobody gets away unhurt. We’re always trying to find somebody whose broken pieces fit with our broken pieces and something whole emerges.” - Bruce Springsteen
Humans, like gerbils, were created for relationship. And yet we’ve made a world where connection and relationship are hard to find.
We became greedy and selfish, enticed by the temptation to win at the expense of others. But what promised to advance us backfired, leaving us suspicious of others who might do the same. At a young age, we are taught to distrust strangers, and understandably so. We want to protect ourselves against the greedy and selfish world we made, so we waste away in our safe loneliness.
Those who are different from us – the autistic, minorities, abject poor, and filthy rich – we mistreat, somehow failing to see them as equally human. The abuse, suppression, and objectification of women by men for centuries has created a chasm of distrust between the sexes. We fall in love with strangers who pass us on escalators, and they fall in love with us, but the spell is so tenuous, any contact will break it.
We are always finding new ways to undermine the connection we need. Today, we hide behind screens that dehumanize the person we’re bullying or gossiping about on the other end.
We all want to find our people, and we could all be our people if we opened our hearts.
It’s no secret how much we have in common, how many of our experiences are shared. We want to be loved, and we’re scared we won’t be. There’s a sadness that haunts even our happiest moments, because we know nothing lasts. Time is relentless, taking everything, and coming for us in the end after everything else is gone. We mask our fear and sadness with anger which we express in self-hatred or prejudice against others.
But the moment we realize everyone else is just as scared and sad as we are, is the moment we can give the empathy, grace, and love to them that we ourselves need.
It’s natural for humans to create a hierarchy of love. We love ourselves most of all; then our families, people we like, our neighbors, our fellow citizens, and last of all, everyone else.
But Jesus died for everyone else – for the eighty-year old beggar in Bangladesh as much as for us. And since God is looking out for us, we don’t have to any more – we are free to look beyond self and to love others. Not just the people we like or the people who are similar to us, but everyone, even our enemies.
Because deep down, we believe it – that humans, like gerbils, were created for relationship. It’s what keeps us coming back and trying again, even when we are hurt by our own or someone else’s lack of empathy, love, or grace. We keep coming back, because we have no other choice. As Bono said, love is all we have left.
J.
Feb. 2, 2021