Photo by Matt Collamer on Upsplash
The world feels ugly right now.
It’s exasperating to watch in real time how cruel and apathetic so many people have become.
How do people get to a place where it sits right with them that people who don’t have the right paperwork deserve to die for it or be caged in conditions not even fit for animals? How do you get to believe that it’s morally justified to decimate an entire state and murder a whole race of people over the actions of a few? How do people shrug their shoulders when others can’t afford basic, lifesaving medication like inhalers and insulin?
How have people become so detached from reality that they no longer care to be a part of humanity?
It’s a pandemic as virulent as COVID. Spread through hateful speech, fear, condoned violence, big egos, and brazen stupidity. Coincidentally, people also think it’s some made-up “woke” conspiracy.
It’s called a lack of empathy.
Whole communities are infected by it. The inability to see past their own nose and think of anything other than feeding on that hate and consuming resources for themselves. They fear everything unknown and use anger and hate to protect themselves.
It’s what they know.
It’s what they’ve been taught and it’s what they keep teaching their children and spreading in their communities.
But there is hope.
Some of us know different.
Some of us still care; and we can continue practicing empathy, teaching it to our kids, and spreading it in our communities.
We just have to be louder about it.
At this point, people are so gaslit and out of touch with what feeling emotion is like that we have to literally spell empathy out for others.
We have to keep empathy from becoming some ancient forgotten custom.
We need to leave plenty of evidence of empathy and kindness so that future generations can look back and find it again if it ever gets totally lost.
We have to share all about it.
Through any means possible.
Writing about it, documenting online about it, speaking about it, and most of all, embodying it.
We have to remind ourselves and others that there is still as much good out there as there is ugliness. We just have to bring more light to the good so it’s not overpowered by the darkness and shadow of hate and ugliness.
Describe what beautiful moments feel like to you.
Share your human experience.
Enlighten others about what it’s like to be in the warm embrace of someone you love and trust. Describe what you feel when you look at your family. Share the relief of waking up and hearing the soft breaths of an aging furry companion still breathing soundly in the morning.
Talk about what it feels like to do the things you love. Talk about joy. Talk about the good in your life.
Listen to and witness others’ stories.
The point is not to veer into toxic positivity and ignore the horrible things happening in the world. But let’s also not let them be the only things we hear and see every day.
Let’s remind each other of what connection feels like so that we stop seeing ourselves as separate from everyone else.
Let’s make it hard to dehumanize others.
Let’s keep fighting for justice.
Let’s keep resisting.
Let’s practice staying strong AND soft.
Because that kind of strength is truly resilient and can overcome whatever comes its way.