Empathy

A couple times I've experienced extreme crisis (all in my mind of course) over meaning in my life. It happened my senior year of college when I had to create a lot of studio art and I questioned the value of those artworks. My sincerest of passions all fall into the "helping people" category and I had never made any art that helped anyone. I panicked over choosing the wrong major and not realizing it until my senior year. Eventually, I made myself get over it...for a while.

I panicked again when student teaching in Spain. I spent hours creating a lesson about drawing fruit and vegetables; hand picking produce at the market, hauling it home on the metro, drawing several examples, and then it flopped. Who gets excited about drawing produce? I felt crushed because I didn't want to be a teacher who just teaches skills without meaning and yet that's who I had become. Sigh. I couldn't see at the time that skills are important even if they don't seem "meaningful" at the time of learning (or teaching) them. I'm extremely grateful to the people who taught me how to read, write, and use the internet because now I get to do this thing called blogging that fills me with joy.

Anyway, I continued to struggle with the art thing. To this day, when I read something that excites me, I can't wait to write about it. I start forming sentences in my mind for the opening paragraph. My religion major man Zach, in the same situation, will hop on the computer and design something or paint what he's excited about. When I realized this, it felt like a revelation when it probably should have been fairly obvious. Sometimes our passions walk around like masked men until we gain a new pair of eyes to see them with and until we let go of what we think we "should" be passionate about.

Back in Spain, I interviewed for an assistant teaching position at the international school for the next year. It was for a pre-school class. Part of the interview was planning a lesson for a first grade classroom. Of course, I even struggled with that. It was the same old story: I couldn't find anything "meaningful" to plan a lesson around. Finally, I settled on "Empathy."

I started with asking them if they knew what empathy was. I gave them my simplified definition and told them it was feeling what other people feel. Sharing happiness and sadness with another person. It's about stepping into another person's shoes and walking around a bit to see what it feels like. Having gathered about ten different pairs of shoes, ranging from big old clunky work boots to fancy lady shoes, I told a story about the person who owned each pair of shoes and let one kid walk around the classroom and then tell us how they would feel if they were that person. Their enthusiasm still spreads a grin across my face. Everybody wanted to talk about how they would feel or one time when they did feel that way. I almost couldn't get them out of the shoes. I don't know that I've planned a more successful lesson!

Today, Zach and I watched a video that brought me to tears, filled me with an enormous amount of hope, and reminded me how important it is to learn empathy. It also gave me new ideas for the school we want to eventually build down in Central or South America. Check it out:

http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1720

I truly believe in the oneness of humanity. The things that divide us aren't what is real. Empathy is a tool that can be used to see the truth and gain greater understanding. I think we could all benefit from the mindful practice of it.