We’ve all been asked the age-old question at some point in our lives: “If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?”. Would it be pompous to say I already have mine? And no, I can’t fly, or time travel or teleport my body to another place in the world. I have empathy. I feel things deeply. I experience emotions more intensely than most. When people are sad around me, I’m sad. When they’re happy, I’m happy. But just like any superhero has their superpower, they also have their kryptonite, and I would go as far as saying mine is the same thing. I can’t tell you how many times a day I find my eyes welling up with tears after scrolling through my Facebook and Instagram feeds or getting notifications from The New York Times and CNN. It seems like feel-good stories of military families being reunited or lost and abused animals finding amazing homes are abruptly overshadowed by the latest political and social atrocities of children in cages, and women’s rights being disparaged. So if my superpower is empathy, my arch-rival lives in my iPhone.
As a 25-year-old in 2019, it would be safe to say too much of my life is spent looking at a screen. There are times where I vow to delete all my accounts and swear off technology for good, then I spend a day without my phone and realize just how dependent I am on it. But when I really try to analyze the issue at hand here, I place a lot of blame on the media as a whole. We can’t escape it. It’s almost as if people are capitalizing on dividing humanity into even smaller and more isolated groups. Even when you try to filter out the “bad stuff” it’s hard to tell if what you’re reading is actually true. With so much emphasis on “fake news” and politically charged propaganda, how is anyone supposed to be able to decipher the truth from the lies? With so many opinions, thoughts (and prayers) and sides to choose, it can be mentally exhausting to even turn on the news anymore. It’s times like these I am reminded of how powerful — and dangerous — my empathy is. Picture it like this:
Empathy is like the iceberg that sank the titanic
Empathy is like the life rafts on the titanic (if there were enough for everyone)
It all depends on how you let it affect you. You can let your emotions get the best of you, and feel helpless, drowning in the sadness and pain that you are experiencing. Or you can allow it to empower you — knowing how connected you are to other beings and the impact you can have by simply helping someone onto that life raft. I believe teaching people empathy is the single most important thing we can do to foster a more accepting, loving and kind world. The more someone is able to empathize with another, the more they are willing to see past their own judgments or agenda and simply see that the other person has a reason for feeling the way they do. I believe one of the biggest problems facing the world today is the lack of empathy in society, politics, medicine… in everything. You see it when Republicans and Democrats fight endlessly over the same issues, refusing to concede or compromise because no one can fathom trying to understand the other side. You see it when men are paid more than women for doing the same jobs simply because of gender. You see it when children are bullied so badly in school that they contemplate (and sometimes do) commit suicide. If more people practiced empathy instead of sympathy — those “thoughts and prayers” would turn into action and change. If more people could try taking a walk in someone else’s shoes, or imagine how they would feel if the shoe was on the other foot, maybe we’d be able to say, “Hey- these feel great, I could get used to this” or “Ouch! Your shoes gave me blisters. How do you walk in these?” But for now, I’ll continue to walk around with my invisible cape tucked under my clothes and hope that more people stop wishing for an unrealistic superpower and realize that they are already capable of having one.