Expectations of Empathy

This morning at work, I was returning from a meeting and passed a colleague. As she passed, I sensed it.

She was asking someone on my team a question when I sidled up to her and waited for her to finish her query. As she turned, I simply put my arms around her. 

"Hi Nadia," I said quietly, "I think you need a hug right now."

And she just started crying. There in my arms, she held on and sobbed. 

I think it's because I know what it's like to hold in so much pain, and contain all the grief in a very tight vessel that you think you've buried deep inside that I am able to sense it so acutely and tangibly in others.

I recall recently talking to someone very important to me and we were discussing our lives, and also that thing about being empaths. I recall pondering the idea that I sometimes tell myself that I am able to absorb all the pain that is out there in the world and perhaps help mitigate the anguish and despair that is out there, if perhaps somehow, even a little bit, it makes the world we live in a better place.

I don't know. Maybe it's a way of surviving for me. I've done my share of locking out people and pushing away those who care simply from a deeply entrenched emotional claustrophobia that maybe everything that comes my way is just a way of me getting my share.

Then again, just the way I spotted Nadia throughout the day chatting with colleagues, making jokes, cackling to her own surprise, I can smile to myself to know that perhaps just by my own small gestures I can provide comfort to others and help lighten the loads they are carrying just by acknowledging that I care.

There'll always be the people who will make sure you know that they care, not by assuming you know, but by their behaviour. It's also ok to let go of the naive idea that you can ever be so important to be someone's #1. Be your own #1. 

Vavavoom

This morning I stood at my garden door, in the sunlit quiet, just enjoying the peace and serenity that comes with that feeling of being alone in a world that's still slumbering. As I stood there watching, I realized in front of me, almost camouflaged, was a huge monarch butterfly. It's wings were like a fine etched stain-glassed window, all gemstone oranges and gold and black.

As it quietly fed off my geraniums, I held my breath. I realized there was a part of me that itched to grab my camera and capture that moment for perpetuity. But for some reason I resisted, and let myself let go of that feeling of wanting to keep something for the future, and instead simply watched the butterfly as it nuzzled the flowers with its wings opening and closing in rapture.

I felt my breathe slow down, as I let myself simply enjoy the moment. Let the contentment and thrill of miracles wash through me. Sometimes it's okay to know that what you have now will soon flit away, maybe just be a nugget of doubt of "did I really experience that?" in memory..

But then again, perhaps simply letting yourself open yourself to the moment in the here, now and today, without worrying about what will come next, is what life is about.

The Sublimity of Reunification

One of the best ways of recovering from anything is through friendship.

Time had passed like a blink of an eye, and yet the very moment I reconnected with one of my best friends it was as if no time at all had passed. And the funny thing is that both of us voiced that very thought, as the penultimate and long-overdue reunion finally happened.

We regressed to those same younger selves that we once were, and yet I reflected on the many ways we had transformed. We returned to the same hallowed halls where we once spent hours and days, and blanketed with memories and time and experience shared everything that has passed since we had went our own ways.

It is fascinating to realize how we were just children at that time we thought we were conquering the world. Perhaps in another ten years again, this realization will happen, looking at ourselves as we are today.

All the "remember when"s of nostalgia, of recounting old escapades as if it were just yesterday, of opening up about failed relationships and worries for the future — and realizing how much we have changed. Him more gentle, me more poised. If anything, I realized we had both survived a long weary journey, and were more laidback, calmer, and steadier from the experience.

I pointed out the full moon as we walked our last moments. "It's giving us its blessing," I joked.

Maybe blessings don't need to really have a point or outcome, maybe they are just appreciating the moments when you have them.

& Change

My goodness, Change, how much I can write about thee.

Within the last few days, I've been ruminating about this phenomenon, change. It is, in continuation to my last post, a fundamental of life itself. But somehow, just yesterday morning, while walking outside at dawn heading to work, it occurred to me that change itself is such an abstraction by it's vulnerability to perception. Because that's all it is really: a metaphysical cognitive effect created by our mind's ability to fragment time and circumstance by our perception of them.

When you break it down again, everything in life is pretty much a creation of our own perception. Life itself is this perception. So it could be said that life as we know it, is only existing by our awareness of it. Thus: "I think therefore I am."

Under that 'clichéd' umbrella, it all seems pretty obvious. So much in life already is simplified and taken as understood, but then somehow without actually considering them, we might be living an unappreciated life that is bereft of further enlightenment. "Everything seems simple until you think about it." ― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife.

I took those few steps out the door and that's when it occurred to me that the sun's up, and it's pretty much been daylight for quite some time. And yet, I had come to overlook this, not by any carelessness, but due to two reasons, the first: that I had in my many years already come to accept the state of the day as how it came; in a nutshell, I took it for granted simply because this was the pattern that occurred each year; and secondly: so slight the increment in changing sunrise had been day to day that it became unnoticeable to my eye.

Both reasons harken to the very aspect of perspective. What exactly demarcated this phenomenon, change? Was it that which happened day to day? Or year by year? Or minute by minute? Yes, but of course everything fell under the category for measuring change, but change itself was changing through that individual acting as observer. So, far be it for me to wake even earlier each day to observe the lightening of the day from dark dusk to the second by second gradual changing of the morning sky and say with satisfaction, Eureka, I have witnessed change in its full glory. Rather, I awaken each day at the same time, while everything externally does whatever it's meant to do, with or without me, and thus my instrument of observation has significantly increased its unit of measurement: my observation of change bears witness every 24 hours. 

So what? Well, so much simply just gets lost in the tumult of life. And that's sort of ironic considering that all this is life. So much just goes by unobserved, and while that bears little significance to our daily duties and responsibilities which seem to take much higher priority in contrast to dilly-dallying about thinking idle philosophies, perhaps the weight of our burdens would be so much lighter if we did, because by our neglect of these observations we lose the ability to appreciate. 

This morning I walked outside, all bundled up like I usually am this winter. But suddenly it occurred to me, this is such a beautiful day. Sure, it was grey, the sun was not out, but a sort of balmy breeze was blowing and it wasn't the frigid cold wind that had been gusting the day before. The thing is, it was still -5C, and like I'd said before in Homeostasis, this is still a relatively low temperature. But but but, it was NOT, not to my perspective in that moment; I took that moment to observe that the weather was beautiful in comparison to the day before, and for that one moment - a mere few seconds - my observation heightened my appreciation for the near future; in fact, it made my entire day (thus far) so much more appreciable. The tiny injection of appreciation simply by my act of observing something I could have just as easily not notice made my own mood so much more greater, making my interactions with my coworkers also greatly more amiable, injecting energy into my own work, and also putting a smile of satisfaction and contentment on my bosses, all coming back around to benefit me. So there you have it. 

Today is a beautiful day, what can I say? (Oh yeah maybe it being Friday has some relevance also)

P.S. If you're looking for more to read, interestingly, I wrote about Change years ago (in 2009!) and you can find that post here.