“Empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of,
being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and
experience of another of either the past or present without having the
feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively
explicit manner; also : the capacity for
this.” –Merriam Webster Dictionary
The classroom was crowded with awkward adults and too-small
chairs. Crockpots burbled. The kids,
still buzzing with adrenaline after performing the thrilling theatrical portion
of the Third Grade Potlatch, were yanking on parental arms, clamoring in
parental ears, and falling over each other in their haste to dig into the
blatantly-not-Native-Alaskan lunch offerings.
Except for one kid. She
was hunched in her small plastic chair, tears running down her face.
I whispered to my own child, “Why is that little girl crying?” I’d already intuited the answer -- but I
wanted my eight-year-old’s take on the situation.
My daughter glanced over quickly. “Her dad was supposed to
come,” she whispered. Then she added,
unbidden, “Her parents got divorced recently, and I think that makes it extra
hard for her.”
I think that makes it
extra hard for her.
Empathy is a concept that seems at once remarkably simple, and
yet at the same time fascinatingly complex. It bubbles, iridescent, in the
shared laughter of lifelong friends. It
quakes with stage-fright within the young actor’s parents. It aches at a stranger’s loss. In the
wordless glance of lovers, it is the joy and the tremor and the sheer humanity of
deep connection: he understands.
How crucial is empathy, for a child? For an adult?
For a society? To what degree is it an innate skill, and to what degree
is it a learned one? These questions
aren’t new; they’ve been rattling my brain for years. I’ve wrestled with them when I’ve struggled
to connect and communicate with adults who are close to me. I’ve also spent a lot of time attempting to
be a Good Mommy (or at least a Passable Mommy) to two kids who seem to differ
wildly in their empathetic responses.
At the age of two, it was already obvious. One of my twins was quick to sense subtle
changes in my mood or her sister’s, and to offer a hug or a pacifier
(respectively, that is; my oral fixation isn’t THAT bad.). A friend who
regularly babysat my kids -- along with her own -- mentioned that she’d fallen
into the habit of using this twin as a helper.
Apparently my toddler was able to understand that her little playmate
had trouble walking on our uneven path, and earnestly offered her hand. The other
twin… not so much. “Mine!” was a
favorite word in her vocabulary.
Over the subsequent six years, both kids grew and
changed. Both gained social skills. Both evidenced some degree of generosity and
kindness. But one twin still seemed to
struggle much more than her sister did in anticipating, understanding, and
responding to the emotions of those around her.
And sometimes I worried.
Now, I whispered back to my young potlatch date, “Well, then,
we need to invite her to eat lunch with us.”
“Yes,” my empathetic kid agreed immediately – but not without a
tiny tinge of regret. My undivided attention is a rare prize. Indeed, she and her sister had been thrilled
when Jay and I said we would both be able to come to this event. Jay, I knew, was squashed into a tiny chair
in the class across the hall, earnestly balancing a paper plate of dubious
delicacies. Moreover, Crying Child is by
no means a close friend to either of my kids.
“Sometimes she just isn’t very nice,” my daughter confided later. “She says mean things about what I bring in
my lunch.” What? Third graders scoff at
homemade whole-grain bread? Apparently,
Crying Girl is into “pink stuff and TV shows”, rather than leaping in mud
puddles, playing FBI Spy, and writing stories about secret portals into outer
space.
At that moment, though, it only mattered that she was a child
who needed a grownup. “Hi there. I’m Molly’s and Lizzy’s mom.” Yup, that’s
my name.
The little girl looked up at me, tentatively, hopefully.
“Would you like to eat with us?” I asked.
Like magic, the tears disappeared.
Shuffling through the lunch queue, I helped my daughter and
Crying Child fill their plates with food. This other kid, as it turned out, was
picky. And loud. Also, she could talk
the hind leg off a donkey, a mule, and probably an alpaca, too. She told me about her pets. She told me about her father’s diabetes. She told me everything, in an endless,
poorly-modulated soliloquy that precluded all communication with my own
child. Empathizing with this lonely
little human was easy -- but being nice to her took more effort.
As I’ve wrangled with how to teach my children to Share, Play
Fair, and Not Be Selfish Little Bastards, it has dawned on me that being an
empathetic person is not at all the same thing as being a nice person. I’ve also come
to realize that empathy consists of at least three interrelated but distinct components. Intellectually being able to figure out what
others feel (I’ll call this “knowing”) is different from vicariously
experiencing emotions (“feeling”). Neither of these is precisely the same as
giving a damn (“caring”).
Cerebral understanding of others’ emotions does not presuppose
a loving nature. Such knowledge can help
one figure out the most effective way to be kind, but it can also, alas, help
one figure out precisely the most effective way to lie, to cheat, and to be
cruel. Socially maladroit kids are not
the ones who morph into the vicious vipers of junior high. Dictators?
Cult figures? People who persuade
everyone to drink the KoolAid? A lot of
them are masters of knowing-without-caring.
Conversely, it’s entirely possible to have a loving nature (that
is, be deeply caring) without readily experiencing the emotions of others, or
even being particularly adept at knowing what they are. The love emanating from
such a person can sometimes be ill-timed, oddly expressed, or hard to interpret
– and thus, sadly, hard to reciprocate -- but it is no less real.
Caring about others is undoubtedly a crucial trait – a society-building
trait -- but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t occasionally feel like a burden. I’d also argue that feeling – wallowing in the
external miasma of joy or angst -- isn’t entirely positive. On the plus side, a
child who senses the wash of emotions around her may find it easier to make
friends and to be the sort of loving and caring soul that every parent wants to
see their kid become. On the other hand,
she is also more likely to pick up on every ounce of negativity and every cue
of subtle disapproval. She is more
likely to internalize even the tiniest social rules and taboos – including the
insidious, nasty, undermining ones that drip through every corner of our
culture. You don’t fit in. Girls can’t do
that. You should be prettier. The
socially myopic, on the other hand, may find it easier to be cool with being
totally uncool.
At the potlatch, it didn’t take a huge amount of empathy for
me to guess that what Crying Child wanted was simply someone to play parent to her
right now. When she helped herself to
seven cookies for dessert, I gently told her that she might not feel very good
at recess if she ate that many. She
seemed pleased by my interference. “How
about if I put back four?” she asked.
When I told her that this idea showed good judgment, she glowed with
pride and rushed to replace the goodies.
As my kids have gotten older, I’ve realized a few things. First, my less-empathetic two-year-old was
actually… pretty normal. Toddlers are
mostly narcissists. Second, the
acquisition of empathy, like pretty much every other talent in the human
repertoire, depends neither on pure nature nor on pure nurture, but a blend of
both. Third, even those with an innate
talent for empathy may have a lot to learn.
I’ve also had time to think a bit about the possible
ramifications of worrying too little – or too much -- about what other people
think. My less empathetic kid sometimes
still seems a little me-focused, but she also delights me with her
individualism. Guess which
eight-year-old girl would prefer to never, ever bathe; thinks her farts are
super-funny; and collects knives? “I
like being awkward”, she told me recently.
She also remarked, as if reporting a delightful discovery, “Sometimes I
feel like everybody else’s universe is completely different from mine.” I kind of love her for that. But I do try to remind her, gently, to always
consider the feelings of others. Amazing as it may seem, there are actually
people who simply do not appreciate the merits of small, grimy, farting,
knife-wielding little girls.
I’ve noticed that the more-empathetic kid sometimes buries her
own desires, in order to avoid conflict or try to meet the needs of
others. This pipsqueak of a person falls
all over herself to make me happy. I kind
of love her for that – it’s hard not to.
But there is always going to be more pain in the world than she – or
anyone -- can handle. As an adult, she
may have days, as many of us do, when she just can’t bear to read the New York
Times headlines – and that’s okay. I try to teach her that sometimes, it’s good
to be different, to be yourself, to make demands. Sometimes, pissing off other people may
actually be the right thing to do – even if your voice shakes. Sometimes, it’s okay to step out of the shoes
of others, and back into your own.
At home that evening, when I was thanking my potlatch-date for
sharing me with her hapless classmate, her twin chimed in unexpectedly. “That happened in my class, too,” she
said. She named one little boy who had sat
alone, crying. Two or three years ago,
I thought, this twin would not have
noticed – or cared. “But Ben and Sarah’s parents took care of him, and then
he was all right.”
“Yeah,” her sister agreed.
“That’s how it was for us, too.
Everything was all right.”
Those two little crying children, they were all right.
And my two children?
They were all right, too.
