I think the first time I noticed it was when I was seven. I am watching The Fox and The Hound. Tweed is dropping Tod off at a game preserve—Tod completely oblivious of his impending fate and Tweed, reflecting melancholic on what she has to do. As Tweed returns to her car, Tod tilts his head to the left, a confused expression on his face. It is in this moment that I find myself wet-cheeked and betrayed, my chest constricting. With Tod, I feel abandoned and alone and with Tweed, I feel the impossible impasse she’s reached to get to this point. I have to leave the room.
Empathy pains. The capability to not only understand, but experience the emotions of others. Watching a peer be called out in class who visibly do not know the answer to a question, seeing someone in a wheelchair struggling to overcome a high incline in the wind, witnessing a soft-spoken boy be rejected by a girl in blue—they all make my heart ache. The problem with empathy pains is how to respond to them. What can the experiencer do but move past these scenes that compel them to rush over and comfort or abandon ship and cry? My initial instinct is always to do the former—to approach the hurt and make them feel better. In my mind, I walk up quietly, bend down in a way that is understanding, and ask Are you okay? They shake their head and tell me all the ways in which they’re wounded while I nod to their problems until they inhale deeply and say Hey, thanks. In this scenario, we both walk away smiling, feeling lighter. In the end, though, I always opt for the latter.
The better part of me knows that to approach these people would only serve to make things worse. I put myself in their shoes and think of how horrific it would be to not only encounter the painful moment they’re in, but then to be reminded of it by another person. It’s bad enough when you yourself undergo something painful, but to have a second individual reestablish this pain would be like pressing on a newly-formed bruise. When embarrassed, dejected, angry, or hurt, most people want to take that feeling and put it in a box marked Give Aways and catch the first bus away from their bodies.
There’s something in that of a loser. When Kady calls Janice a lesbian in Mean Girls, when Brandon Flowers sings And someone will drive her around down the same streets that I did, when we read about Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower in a catatonic state we feel inexplicably connected to them. Their situations appear unjust and we as consumers of their misery feel our own bad memories channeled through their faces, their soundwaves, their words. If only we could help them, we could help ourselves. If only we all could be so sensitive to one another’s emotions, perhaps there would be no cause for pain at all. But this thing we call life isn’t a blockbuster, top hit, or bestseller, is it?
