If Empathy Were A Muscle

Can we pause our rush to cancel another person long enough to attempt to consider what it’s like to live inside their skin? Even more valuable is to explore living in the skin of someone who triggers our anger or judgment. That’s where opportunity lies for understanding our own fears and anxiety. 

The New York Times’ Sam Sifton wrote an intriguing article discussing the difficulty teachers currently face when teaching Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as a literary work that deals with feelings about slavery and racism. The upshot? Teachers just don’t want to talk about it, even though the book is generally regarded as a fascinating window into Huck’s (and society’s) complex feelings about what was going on at the time.

Yet, works like these offer an opportunity to exercise the brain’s power to understand how others think. And that’s a lesson we all need today. 

Knowing our own values is important to helping us navigate a world filled with a limitless number of variations on how to think and navigate life. The Buddhist practice of Metta teaches that everyone strives to be happy, healthy, safe, and live with ease. As such it offers a framework for understanding behavior outside one’s own values. 

Remember Senator Al Franken? He was “cancelled” and resigned his position during the “Me Too” movement because of a photo in which he objectified a sleeping female service member. While we can criticize him as a bad guy for overlooking her humanity, it’s possible that his motivation to make comedy blinded him from seeing her dignity. Recognizing and pausing the judgment offers an opportunity for understanding. He lost his perspective in a moment of pursuing comedy, and caused harm.

Teachers have the opportunity to encourage discussions about vulnerability, and how individuals can be blinded to one another when there’s something of value to be had. Instructors who don’t want to take on the challenge of teaching a historical masterpiece simply because it’s misaligned with current thinking are missing an important chance to broaden their students’ point of view, whether it’s by understanding historical thinking or the perspective of their fellow students. 

This is a lesson we all need in today’s political environment. The more fixed we are in our political positions, the less willing we become to understand one another. Understanding is not the same as agreeing. But understanding does allow space for discussion. Whether we read Huck Finn or not, the challenge is to exercise the mind’s capacity to try on someone else’s way of being and to expand our perspective. 

If empathy is a muscle to be exercised, then working to explore the experience of 19th century racism is an advanced level of that exercise. Why not start more simply by working to understand a neighbor or family member? You don’t ever have to agree with them, but demonstrating understanding begins the ending of division, conflict and denial.