Empathy-tinted glasses

I won't call myself an empath because I dislike labels. I like to think of myself as someone with a pair of empathy tinted glasses. This is very similar to the "sunglasses" from the movie They Live OR like the Peril Sensetive Sunglasses from the HGTG. Things changed once I picked up these nice looking shades.

The oldest prominent memory that I have with these shades dates back a fateful day in school where I was involved in a "fight". I hit someone and the pain it caused them did something to me. I remember being numb for a while after that. The fact that I was capable to such violence, of inflicting so much pain was very alient to myself. I tried to replicate the hurt by inflicting the same on myself for the rest of the week without much success. You see it is very important to me that I am familiar with the type / intensity of pain I can cause. Since that incident I have had trouble "fighting"; even playfully. I DO NOT want to hurt people.

The benefits of wearing empathy-tinted-glasses is that the entire world suddenly becomes much richer. It becomes annotated with details which adds a new dimension to the world. This is complex for sure, but I do love complex things.

For example, someone was rude to you at the coffee-shop. With the added benefit of the empathy-tinted-glasses, you suddenly are aware of the following: (this list is obviously non-exhaustive; this is all I can come up with at this time.)

• what thing in the immediate environment caused the person to behave rudely
• what thing in the persons history predisposed them to be triggered by the thing in the immediate environment
• was this anything to do with you or were you just at the correct place at the correct time ? (the answer is yes most of the time)

With these small pieces of information, you now have the ability to be curious about this behaviour instead of whatever was your initial reaction.

Ofcourse, I am not claiming that the annotations are correct. Most likely they are not and they are biased because I am a biased person; the annotations are colored by my experience of the world. The point of these glasses is not accuracy, it is to introduce a layer of nuance which helps me slow down and reflect. This slowing down helps me deal with the situation better.

Over the years I have also gotten good at reading expressions and body language of people. It does feel like a superpower.

Choosing how to respond

I strictly believe that how you choose to respond in situations is a reflection of your internal processes. The pre-frontal cortex is the engine that filters all of the responses from the rest of the brain. This is a muscle that needs training. It is important to me that my actions are universalizeable (the categorical imperative filter)

That said, I want to live in a world that is kinder and has space for everyone. I try very hard to base my response from a place of empathy. This plays well into the forgiving tit-for-tat (FTFT) strategy that Robert Sapolsky talks about in his book Behave. This is a good strategy because it creates space for noisy communication in a real-world system like ours. We are people, we are not machines after all.

Most of my life decisions need to pass an internal committee before any action gets done. This includes each and every interaction I have with the world. Every single line that is spoken, every single thing that is done. Sometimes, somethings will slip through the cracks; I am human after all. Perfection is unattainable, but it is our North Star.

Love is a muscle. It gets stronger the more you use it. More importantly it does not deplete. You do not have to ration love.

This idea fuels most of this fire.

Anyway, Cheers!!