What is the dollar value of empathy?
What a ridiculous question! But I ask it because heightened empathy may be one of your most important acquisitions during this recession.
Many of us who are middle class are used to being able to control our destinies. But now job loss, loss of savings, and foreclosures becoming middle class realities. (I write as one of those affected, not from a safe distance. )
We can either look backwards at what we thought our life was like and feel deprived. We can go a little crazy because we can’t make sense of what is going on now. Or we can look ahead and start building anew, confident that we can make our lives better even as we face completely unexpected, life-altering events.
I assume you are someone who wants to thrive. The most important moments for you are occuring right now, while you are, metaphorically speaking, turning your gaze away from the past and starting to look in the direction of an unknown future. You are still, yet inside you are moving. Your eyes scan parts of life that you couldn’t see when you were immersed in your own world. What happens now — inside of each one of us — is what we will build our next chapter on.
I believe that truly letting go — daring to look openly, without clinging to the past — unleashes the best in us. Those who stay trapped in resentment, numbness, or hyper-positivity, are by definition those who are still holding on, trying to make life stay the same. It’s a losing battle.
Letting go doesn’t drop us into nothingness — it opens us up to a deeper connection to life. We are built to pass through ambiguous times so that our heightened connection to life can become firm enough to inform our next steps.
Empathy – being able to see the world as others see it — will be your gift for persevering.
Can you see, by experiencing fear about money, how crippling poverty is? Can you see, by losing your career, how many people are dealing with loss and how important caring for others is? Can you see, by your own struggles to stay in your home, how important home is? Can you see, by your own efforts to start a new career or a business, how important courage is, how essential support is?
Opening up to seeing the world as it is, fully, is painful…it can feel like resting on a knifepoint. But if you can stay open, or at least not block that opening with anger, resentment, and numbness, your heightened awareness will, without your even trying, seep into your everyday life.
You will find that because you have become more, you can do more in the world. You can start that book you are meaning to write, you can begin over and enjoy it, you can find greater depth in your relationships, you can find a new calling, you can create a new way to be happy. You will cease curating your limitations and focus more on trusting your potential.
There is no prescription for something you must do with your greater empathy — it is your gift to use as you choose.
We’ve all heard people who have been through difficulty say that it was the bset thing that ever happened to them…because without the challenge they would have never been able to create the life they now have. Those words are ones you can utter too; they are the sign of the deepest kind of success in life.
Those words are cold comfort now, while you are passing through the darkness. They are not meant for you now. But make them your beacon, and one day you will utter those words in your own way, and you then will be a beacon for others. The example of the life you created out of your loss will help others.
No darkness lasts forever. Especially not this one.
Tagged as:
coping with recession,
job hunting,
self employment,
stress,
unemployment
