Empathy and Contentment—A difficult combination
While I spend many a post midnight hour pondering, wondering, trying to see relationships, putting pieces of life’s puzzle together, and claim it brings me more contentment to at least think I understand some aspects of life better—well, there is an emotional component to the process which is far less easy to put in words. That’s the thing about emotions, they influence us a lot, but are not easy to define why.
Empathy is an emotion. Love is an emotion. Love is all over the map, often comes in endless forms, gets mixed up with sex, and especially in the younger years, is a totally nondescript stressful uniquely personal feeling which is hardly under the guidelines of reason. If we fall in love with the town idiot, or the wrong color, the wrong personality, the wrong social status, the wrong religion, we just do. Some people are universally lovable. Others are more like me, friendly in an odd way, but distant, not touchy feely outside of sex itself, and have been told many times I am way too in need of private space. Maybe that is the least of my weirdness. Then again, if we don’t think of ourselves as ‘weird’ compared to others, then perhaps reality escapes us. Weirdness is partially just another word for diversity. It is probably just safer to accept we are weird and just be sure our ‘peculiar’ weirdness does not harm others in the process.
When it comes to empathy, this is something which I had as far back as I can remember. It expressed itself first with pets of various sorts. Somehow I felt, even as a child, responsible for their well being and responded to their no strings attached love. Humans have all kinds of strings attached to any love for another human, while animals rarely do. Even when mood swings turn us into a total ass, a pet loves us back unconditionally. I doubt I was taught empathy, but am not saying empathy can’t, to some degree, be learned. What follows is way too personal, but I don’t know how else to judge empathy. Clearly, in the end therefore, there is no way for me to judge just how applicable this is to others. It seems hard to find any solid data on just how much empathy is an inherited trait, and how much of it is a learned trait from our formative environment.
My first business as a young kid was to raise chickens and sell the eggs around the neighborhood—Reid’s Leghorn eggs. I think I was the only one to have chickens. When a chicken got sick and had to be put down, it was a traumatic experience to hang it from a limb and slit it’s throat while it was thrashing around. It would haunt me for days. Later in life when I defended someone in ways which irritated authority figures, some people saw my actions as daring or generating self-inflicted wounds with people over me in a position to hurt my career. But it wasn’t daring or stupidity—it was the empathy thing. I knew I could get thrown out of graduate school for stealing a dog from the Animal complex, but I also knew that this dog let me know he was depending on me to save him. It is always in the eyes. I knew it would cause me a problem way back when I coached high school and gave the most valuable runner award to a reclusive mud lark misfit instead of to the Prom King and high academic achiever, who had a slightly better score on my point system. It worked out well for all in the end but emotional dynamics were intense and whether it was all worth it is debatable.
I knew, when teaching at a University, and I spent time creating administrative hearings for students who were in violation of some rule, that this was way beyond my contract duty. I knew when I out maneuvered and boxed in faculty to revise some department policies which would be good for students, but a hassle for faculty, that at best, I would be temporarily very unpopular with my colleagues. For whatever reasons, I was blessed with the ability to box in and outlast faculty and administrators on issues which never remotely related to my gaining anything personally in terms of salary or title or power or popularity. Some students who pleaded for help were not even in my classes. On top of that, I tended to teach large classes and had a greater variety of class preparations than anyone else in the department. So I had no time for all this other stuff.
Yet every time confronted with a good person trapped by injustice with rigid rules and circumstances beyond the student’s control, especially if they were right out of some sort of ghetto environment, it was hard to say no. Maybe it was that chicken all over again, trapped and thrashing around desperately not wanting it’s throat cut. More likely it was the eyes, often wide eyed with searing hopelessness and desperation. The general feeling is that most everyone, trapped in these hell holes for neighborhoods, are minus any redeeming personal values and priorities. That’s a lie. The truth is that many of them are the most honest, dependable, cooperative, hard working, most ethical persons I have ever met. They just have nothing much in life going for them. Someone told them I might help them, they believed it, and most of the time I gave in. It always seemed that I, with so much going for me, was obligated to at least try to help someone with so little going for them except their personal character— often an admiral personal essence developed in the worst of environments.
The routine got to be a very familiar one. My chairperson and other administrators would ask ”why are you doing this? What are you gaining except to get a lot of others irritated with you?” The administrative Chairperson of the hearing committee would invariably be sarcastic in his/her opening remarks something like: “Of course the student in question is being defended here by Dr. James who seems to find this sort of thing a game.” Then would come the lecture about the purpose of Departmental or University rules and how they apply to all students, and when exceptions are made it is unfair to other students who have to abide by the rule in question. Most members of the committee would, one way or another, make the same pitch. The student would whisper to me dejectedly that he/she doesn’t have a chance, and believed the committee members hated him/her. I would tell them just relax, it is early in the game.The committee didn’t hate them, they just didn’t really know the student and loved their rules. When possible I would get some authority figure like a former high school teacher or employer (almost all these students have to work besides going to school) to review the past history and current situation of the student. It was always important from the git-go to get the committee talking about the real live student in front of them, instead of the rule or me. I am taking a specific case here, albeit all the cases varied.
When it was my turn I would talk first about the merits of the student in question and express the opinion that “we, as faculty and administrators, should always help students like this to get over hurdles that they face. This young man/woman has given the kind of consistent effort to get a college degree, under circumstances which most of us never faced. Yes, he (in this case) has missed more than three class sessions with unexcused absences. Yes, the instructor told the student from day one that he could not be excused from any classes due to his work schedule off campus, and yes the rules say a student can be dropped from the class for non attendance. It is a good rule put in to help maximize the number of students who pass courses. No one objects to the rule. The only day the student misses this class is Friday, and his girlfriend takes notes for him. Yes, the girlfriend is not authorized to be in the class, but this is trivial since she gains no credit or benefit of any kind by doing this. The student has passed exams to date with B’s and C’s. The student works full time, has financial obligations to his family situation with young siblings, and cannot take the course another semester because he needs to graduate since he is not eligible for any more student loans. For financial reasons he needs to get on with his career right now. It is our duty not to do anything to destroy his efforts, his hopes, his need to break out of his neighborhood and achieve a better life. When a rule no longer serves the purpose for which it was intended, it needs to be waived. What kind of institution would use a rule to wear a student down, make his life any more stressful, or disappointing, and call it our duty?”
Of course the committee members response for turning the student down is one of “where does making exceptions end?” “No one is questioning the character of this student, albeit he is not really the angel Dr. James makes him out to be. But we also admit to his strong efforts to better himself. Letting him be exempt is simply unfair to other students who followed the rule in question. At this point I size up the situation and fear he is going to lose so I say——“There is a bit more defense to present but this has gone on longer than anticipated and I need to get some preparation done for an upcoming class so we need to finish this hearing up another day.” They are trapped. They can’t make me stay and they don’t want to conclude without his defense being completed. So it is adjourned.
Before we meet again my ‘sources’ tell me we don’t yet have the committee votes, and that part of the problem is that some members don’t want to encourage me to keep doing this sort of thing. So I go to the next and more desperate plan B. When the committee meets again the student’s entire class is there and every student in the class says they are not offended at all with giving this student a waiver to the rule. Some committee members try to push back and say there is a principle at stake here which is not easy to overlook.
When they finish with their ‘principle’ position I pull out the last trick. “Yes, there is a principle here, an important principle.” I called his employer yesterday and the employer told me he would make some alterations in his employee schedules so the student could attend classes on Fridays. He thanked the University for showing such interest in our student’s success. My question of principle is why is it my job to make that kind of phone call when we have all sorts of student services in existence which I thought were there to aid students with just such a problem. We also have here someone from the Student newspaper (on purpose) so let’s not have this be a campus wide debate. The committee can leave here now with their arms still wrapped around the rule, the student can now be in class on Fridays, and personally I will be delighted to see all that desperation, frustration, and hopelessness disappear from his eyes.
Later the student comes by and asks with tears in his eyes, “Why did you go through all that for me? I am not even in your class.” I reply, “Don’t take it personal, we are just ships passing in the night, a brief communication and our differing paths go on. I am paid to help students. You are obligated to do the best you can for yourself as long as you can. Keep the faith in yourself. Return the favor by helping someone else when you can. If I could have drummed up a good reason not to get involved I would have.”
But, and this is a big BUT, which tempers the whole scenario here, is this: This student, like so many others from similar backgrounds, has multiple hurdles to get over. They may have ongoing family situations, may have health situations which need attention with no money to get medical treatment, may have work obligations that leave them with little time to study, may have graduated from a poor high school and they hardly are ready to start college, and it goes on and on depending on the student in question. The truth is this: most of the time there is no wonderful ending to their struggles. These disadvantaged students get helped over one hurdle but the remaining hurdles wear such students down, and most of the time they never do really reach their career potential. They get exhausted and settle for a limited career objective, hopefully manage to get to a better neighborhood and end up a postman or assistant to this or that, and at least get through life with less stress than the neighborhood in which they grew up. In the end, their formative environment was too much, too long, too often, too stressful. They sadly pay the price.
This probably explains why I am such a strong supporter of Terrell Owens. He lucked out. He has an amazing reservoir of willpower—which is mostly a genetic characteristic, and learned from his grandmother, who raised him, to focus on a single objective, not to trust anyone, and simply run over, through, or around every hurdle in his way, on his terms. He would never have shown up in my office because he amazingly could actually do it all on his own. He would, through amazing willpower and focus, get over every hurdle on his own. This is rare, and it irritates me that so many attack the very character qualities which enabled him to achieve success on his own. I know his detractors don’t realize what they are really criticizing, that it is not personal, but it is sad such feelings exist. That’s life I guess. Imagine if I had told the student in this narrative: “It’s always about you. You are very selfish. You are going through life thinking about yourself, focused on your own performance. Life is a team game. Others follow the rules. You should too.”
Empathy, once created as part of our persona, seems fairly permanent. When I retired I just shifted my empathy from ‘in my face’ recipients to my FANAFI Fund (Find A Need And Fill It). Just a case of ‘enough is enough’. In our face empathy is very stressful, at least it was to me, and at some point, enough is enough.
In the end I really don’t regret being saddled with such empathy. The point here, after all this personal history, is that contentment and empathy have an unusual relationship. I suspect that empathy helps build a base whereupon following the Golden Rule enables the giver to reach a higher level of contentment than if they didn’t have such empathy with diversity and the less fortunate. On the other hand, the sadness that comes with empathy for the less fortunate creates a contentment that is more mellow, and mixed with a healthy sadness. Contented or not, we cannot escape the reality of just how much genuine sadness abounds in God’s evolutionary process. To escape the depth of sadness which accompanies real life we, who are more fortunate, need dwell on gratitude for our own, however meager, successes in life. It is true, by the time we have learned enough to really live, we are old enough to die. After almost 500 musings since 2005 I have yet to be able to answer the question “And so what are you going to do with all this ‘understanding’?”. Maybe the answer for me is simply “I will die with gratitude and contentment. Why not? We all die, no one gets out of this world alive.” If there is a Heaven—fine; if not the gratitude and contentment achieved via the Golden Rule in our earthly lifetime was our Heaven---and probably a ticket to any post-life Heaven. Like T.O. loves to say: “Fair is fair”, coupled with what I like to say: “Enough is enough”. If someone said to us, “Would we like to roll the dice again and be born again via the happenstance of which sperm combines with which egg, I reckon most of us would have to think it over. It is a very stressful experience, and like playing poker—it comes with no guarantees. The “enough is enough” me, would likely choose not to press my luck. We really know—we really do—that with a slight twist of fate, here and there, much of what we valued from our life would have never been. And that it is not just us, this whole life thing involves billions of other humans besides ourselves. Wow. Nah, don’t shuffle the cards again, this time I might get burnt in the shuffle.
