On Empathy

One of the greatest works of fiction I have ever read happens to be a Harry Potter fanfiction. That fanfiction was Harry Potter and Welcome to the World of Grey, by the user sobsicles. For my readers that are not interested in this fandom or perhaps know nothing about Harry Potter, let me vaguely summarize. The fanfiction follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who came from a background of an abusive foster family after his parents were killed, from the moment he interacts with Bellatrix in the fifth book of the original series. It begins after Bellatrix kills Sirius, her own cousin and Harry’s godfather, at which he starts feeling indescribable rage, eventually murdering her. His act of murder catapults his character in an unknown moral world of grey, or the middle of something black and white. Harry’s character is pure and good in the series. He is known for the immeasurable amount of love he holds, despite all his past trauma, a trait that happens to be key in why he wins his last duel. The murdering of Bellatrix shatters his entire world, as he is shunned by everyone on his side, and he is set to live with his enemies, the essentially Hitler and neo-nazis of his world, until he decides to make himself known again. Interestingly enough, the Hitler of his world, or Voldemort, is not someone you come to hate after reading the novel (which I will call it, as it is the length of all three Lord of the Rings books combined), and that is purposeful. Voldemort was born under Amortentia, a love potion that creates a devotion fueled entirely by the potion, with no shred of emotions necessary for the one under it to feel towards the person who created it for it to work. Children born under Amortentia know nothing of love, and therefore feel nothing of love, or hate for that matter. Voldemort bases his decisions purely on a sense of vengefulness and power, neither of which are love or hate. He murders thousands, and yet you feel empathic for him, or at the very least I did, at the end of the novel. To be able to feel empathy towards even the greatest evil, is the whole point of being kind. It is to be kind no matter what, despite all signs saying not to be. 

In the modern day, murder is thought to be one of the worst crimes you can commit, especially when it is put in context of less ‘serious’ crimes such as assault or stalking. In the magical world of Harry Potter however, the wand chooses the wizard, as the saying goes, which means that your wand becomes the person you grow to be with you. Since most actions are taken with your wand, so are your crimes. Meaning that with your wand, murdering, not necessarily killing, takes away from your very soul. In fact, deliberately and willingly murdering someone will literally tear your soul apart, leaving fragments of it scattered across different objects, granting you immortality, but leaving you without many senses, emotional and physical. It gives you great power, but at a great cost. It shows just how easily we can succumb to an addiction, because once you feel that power, all you’ll ever want is to feel it again and again. To Voldemort, and maybe even to our worlds Hitler, it was not hate that swayed them, but immense power, to do what they did.

To some, myself included, this seems to be a surface level revelation. Obviously, nothing in life is ever truly black and white, but there seems to be an astounding number of things we treat as so. Politics is probably the best example. Yes, everyone exists on a political spectrum (or compass, as it is), but we often treat those opposite of our own spectrum as villains in a sense. We cannot see where they are coming from, and refuse to acknowledge that they may be coming from anywhere at all. Humans naturally fall to each other in groups for survival's sake, as they have done for millennia, a bit of information I know from the wonderful book Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein, a book I was expected to read for my junior year government class (thank you Mr. Singh). But we no longer do this for survival, but for a sense of self and purpose. It’s a way to conform, and to feel safety within our numbers. Without this need to survive, we turn this feature of our community into a need of an enemy, or something to be against, to pit our morals against to prove to ourselves that we are good. I believe it’s validation that we feel is necessary because there cannot be good without its opposite. If we are the good, who is the bad? And so we fall upon the term ‘others’.

No one wants to be painted as unkind, or bad, but it is a term we all must apply to ourselves at least once, at the very least to keep ourselves humble. I personally believe that as soon as you label someone else as the ‘other’, you are becoming less kind. Immediately, it becomes as if they are not human. Perhaps they are not the greatest monster, but they are a type of one, a far removed descendant of one. Their every move is to be criticized, and cited to be with bad intentions. To bring back my discussion of politics, we see the other political party as the ‘other’. It has led to many left-leaning people saying that the right is uneducated, yet not pitying them that they perhaps genuinely are not educated, and that their education was not a right bestowed upon them. It has led to people saying that Republicans are bigots (and often case, they are), but never why they grew up that way, and never an assumption that they were not able to grow up around so many cultures as maybe we have, and have come to not appreciate them. Republicans or right leaning voters often fall upon this same issue, a more prominent example (and one that I can relate to) being the inability to see transgender people as more than messengers of propaganda, rather than humans living life differently. 

The most recent instance of this phenomenon would be the assasination of the political commentator, Charlie Kirk. Being a screenager of sorts, I saw most of the commentary on his death, and I was quite appalled at how some left leaning people tended to react to it all. Against the argument that their response was too harsh, their retort was that it was what he deserved, that his own philosophy that gun deaths are necessary made it hypocritical to be sorry for him.  This made me quite worried for the state of our country. Yes, I do not agree with almost everything this man said, but if you do not care for his life, what about those that watched it all happen? He died in front of at least a dozen people standing at best 6 feet away, but he was watched by hundreds. Just because he was not empathetic to those kids that have died in school shootings (which I do not believe is the case, his only stance was that their deaths were necessary, not that he did not regret their lives were taken), does not mean that we should have celebrated his. May I reiterate, that the most difficult part of being kind is being kind consistently. To look at someone who has made the worst decision you’ve ever known and to be kind, and to feel for them. It is not stooping you down to their level to show them what it means to care for others. It does not mean that you agree with everything they’ve said, or that you condone any actions they’ve taken. It also does not mean that you are any better than them. For them, I feel sorry that they are misfortunate to not have the experience to turn to kindness instead of hate. If you look at it from a religious perspective, perhaps they may be condemned forever in a hell of sorts, but it is not my job to condemn them. If they shall rot in the Fields of Punishment, I shall not judge them as they walk upon the fields of Mother Earth. 

Perhaps you’re thinking, “you’re looking too deep into it” but that’s the very issue. We simply do not look deep enough. It baffles me every time I talk to some people my age as it becomes blatantly obvious who has spared a thought about their lives and reflected versus those who just live theirs. As an anxious person, it is within my nature to look and critique everything ever done or said to me, and unfortunately, take it with its negative connotation first, but I do not feel regret that I was born with such a disorder. To look into things is a gift. To worry not just about myself, but about others, is a gift.  To have natural curiosity is a gift. A gift I often take for granted. Meeting so many different people in my life has left me in dismay of just how much we lack curiosity. And within that, the topic of this essay, empathy. 

Pretty winded introduction there, but it has its purpose. One of the most precious things we can do as humans is have empathy. For those that often get empathy and sympathy confused, sympathy is feeling for someone, or feeling sorry for their misfortune from a distance. Empathy, however, is feeling for someone. It’s where we get the phrase “put yourself in their shoes” (notice, the ‘others’ still exist). That phrase comes with the pre-existent notion that we naturally are not empathetic. We say this to people, noted mostly children, who did not think of their actions beforehand, and how they would impact others. Alternatively, we say it when someone around us makes an assumption on the basis of someone else's actions without fully understanding their story. Funny, how we need to understand the other side before we are empathetic. 

To me, empathy is not inherent, but it is also not dependent. I feel empathic on the basis that you and I are both humans, and that we both feel. I feel sorrowful for you when I see you to be sorrowful, not when I understand why you are so. Now you just read how I said it is not inherent, so where do we learn it? 

Life. That seems like a dumb answer, but also the only one I have (and also maybe you shouldn’t be getting answers from a 17 year old, but to each their own). You cannot learn empathy from a book. It can show you empathy, but learning is practicing and fixing your mistakes. I learn to be empathetic every single day. I improve my empathy by speaking to others and connecting with them. I try my hardest to put my own biases away and I notice what the others feel. I would say I put my emotions away as well, but emotions are what make us human, and to understand another human, I must be one as well. 

At times it physically pains me that we cannot even be empathetic from the media we see. Perhaps even sympathetic. To watch films and learn nothing about the life of another, to hear music and learn nothing of emotions, to view art and learn nothing about perspective or to write and despise writing our own perspective. To anyone reading, I implore you to live life with not only your own perspective, but of everyone that you ever meet in your journey. Wonder about what others would think of your achievements, your actions, or your losses. Be curious about other cultures, because that is what will make you able to become empathetic towards others more often. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable, even if it comes as a loss towards you, because you will never truly lose anything from learning. Experiences come from trying something new, not retrying something you have done many times over (and I hope you don’t expect a different result from that, because that’s called insanity). Read, even though I said you cannot learn empathy from it, because you can practice your empathy, on characters instead of people, so that when it comes to the real thing, you feel like you know what you are doing. And in general, be kind. To be kind is the greatest gift to others that you can give. I say that even though it sounds cliche and you’ve heard it a thousand times, because I guarantee you that you are not kind enough, not to others and not to yourself. I know this because I too am not kind enough, and neither is no one else on this planet. Kindness, unfortunately, is also just a skill you must work on every day. I describe it as a Sisyphean task, but trust me, more so is it just living. We live in a world of grey, and we all always will. You cannot live your life in hatred, just as you cannot live your life in kindness because one does not exist without the other. Love and let yourself be loved.