The Most Powerful Human Connector
On a chilly autumn evening in Barcelona, I stumbled across a woman sobbing quietly into a pink tissue as she leaned wearily against the wall of her front stoop. Her pants were slightly torn. Her blue eyeliner was smeared across her left cheek. And her hair was mangled and unkept, only accentuating her general state of destitution.
“You ok?” I whispered, while gently placing my hand on her knee.
Staring up at me in both shock and confusion, she quickly replied in Catalan, “What?!….I mean…no…yes…I…….”
Her words trailed off into a black pit of fear and desperation as thick drops of rain pounded on the cement. The world seemed blurry and out of focus, as if her brain hadn’t quite rebooted. She was running on empty
“My husband and I aren’t well,” she stutters. “He constantly argues with my children about their clothes, their grades, their high pitched squeals...” Taking a deep breathe, she rubs her eyes and continues, “I know they have to work it out, but I hate the yelling, the tension, every single moment of every day. It’s so damn hard, but I don’t have a choice. I’m the one paying all the bills. I’m the one keeping us all alive. They need me, and I just need to endure the pain.”
I had no idea how relate to this woman.
I didn’t have children. My husband and I were doing well. And despite my father’s bouts with anger, we found sanctuary in one another when life was difficult, a sense of peace when we were overwhelmed.
The only place I could relate was her sense of anger, sadness, fear and determination. These were visceral indicators of where she wanted to head in her life; signposts of what worked and what didn’t work; of what felt good and what needed to change.
Her emotions were the one human condition that bound us together.
At every moment, we’re enveloped in a world that’s completely unique, a world of sights, sounds and tastes that’s filtered through our individual lenses. I will never see the same “red” someone else sees, taste the same melon someone else tastes, hear the same story someone else hears, but I can feel the same emotion.
I know happiness, despite never winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I know sadness, even if I haven’t lost a parent. I know love, even if my attraction is to another person.
When I sat with this woman, it was our shared understanding of desperation, of anger, of fear that connected us. Whatever kicked off those feelings were unique to her, but the emotions themselves are universal.
By the time I left, we both accepted that her situation hadn’t changed. Her husband was still the same person, her children endured the same criticism, but she herself had shifted. Her desperation was no longer isolated, her experience was no longer that of loneliness. By taking the time to empathize with her, we moved from pain to peace, from fear to contentment.
To feel with someone is the purest form of communication.
Photo by Donald Jusa
