Empathy is my Pandemic Superpower
The active art of practicing compassion
A woman walks down a crowded street, mask dangling around her chin.
Two families, maskless, huddle together on the sidewalk, chatting as the kids run and play together.
As I take my lunchtime walk, a man brushes right past me, his shoulder brushing mine. As he saunters off, I swear I hear him cough.
My first reaction in situations like these is anger. How dare they? How dare these people behave so recklessly? Don’t they care about other people at all? Are they even aware of the pandemic? Are they selfish, or just stupid?
I bathe myself in righteous outrage. I recall every news article about people crowding into parks and bars and family homes and how those people are the reason the virus continues to spread. I catalogue all the ways I am obeying the rules, sacrificing my comforts. I build a little wall of judgement between me and them.
The limitations of anger
Indignation and judgement feels “good” in the moment, but it rarely actually is good for me. I get agitated, stressed, hopeless. I can feel the negativity surging through my system, jangling my nerves, forcing my heart to beat too fast. And it certainly does no good for the world: my anger in these moments is not the kind of useful, clarifying emotion that can bring about change and justice. It serves no function at all, except to make me feel as though the world is a dark and miserable place.
Luckily, I (like you) am not condemned to hold onto my first reaction. I can choose a different path.
Choosing empathy
One of the most influential pieces of writing in my life has been David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water.” Wallace gave this commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, and it is full of his trademark brilliance and insight. In it, Wallace reminds us that one of the biggest lies our brain will tell us is that we are the absolute centre of the universe. Despite this, he reminds us we have the capacity to choose differently:
“I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.”
David Foster Wallace
Wallace asks us to consider the everyday frustrations of life: the line at the supermarket, the traffic on the highway. In these moments, we often get angry. Look at all these idiots with their SUVs on the highway! How dare that guy cut me off! Why is that woman only buying one pack of bell peppers when there’s a line back through the aisles? In these moments, we are imagining ourselves as the centre of the universe: our frustration, our boredom, our need to get home, all of these take absolute precedence at the expense of everyone else around us, whose sole function appears to be to get in our way.
Wallace conjures the image of a woman who has just screamed at her child in the checkout line to illustrate his point:
Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider.
David Foster Wallace
What I choose to consider
A woman walks down a crowded street, mask dangling around her chin. She has a medical condition that is invisible to me, that makes it hard for her to wear the mask for too long. She tries, but sometimes she just needs to pull the cloth away from her mouth and breathe.
Two families, maskless, huddle together on the sidewalk, chatting as the kids run and play together. The families are “bubbling” in a way that is perfectly legal in the city I live in. It’s been a lifesaver. Each of the parents has been struggling to work and care for their children. They are so grateful to have more help, more human connection to help them get through these times.
As I take my lunchtime walk, a man brushes right past me, his shoulder brushing mine. As he saunters off, I swear I hear him cough. The man has just been laid off. He’s upset, he doesn’t even notice me. He is uncertain about his future. As he stumbles off, he chokes back a sob.
Are any of these scenarios likely? Maybe, maybe not. They’re certainly not impossible though. And they’re certainly not any less likely than my kneejerk assumption that everyone is out to get me, that no-one else cares as much about the virus and keeping their fellow citizens safe as I do.
The takeaway
Sometimes, we talk about empathy as if it is just something that happens without our control. It is an either/or opposition. Either we are an empathetic person, or we’re jerks.
But empathy demands much more from us than that. It is an active choice, oftentimes (for me at any rate) a struggle. I have to fight against my instincts towards anger, fear, judgement. I don’t always succeed.
The struggle is worth it. When I can summon up my empathy, I de-centre myself and my own experience of the world. I flex my creativity to imagine a world that is far more complex and nuanced than my amygdala can contemplate. I extend the same benefit of the doubt I give myself to the people around me.
I can feel my heartbeat slow. The tension seeps out of my body. And once I am no longer obsessing about what other people are doing “wrong” I can be in community. I can wave at the elderly woman who passes me on the street. I can go home and donate to a food bank. I can focus on making the world just a little kinder, a little better as I imagine a community, a city, a world full of people just like me. Struggling to get by, doing the best that they can.
