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Transcript

Entering Another Person’s World · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: and time.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: This week,
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to spend some time with five ideas that belong together but aren't
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  SPEAKER_00: the same thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy, compassion, self-awareness, outward awareness, and finally, love.
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  SPEAKER_00: I want to take them one at a time because I think we sometimes rush to the last word
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  SPEAKER_00: and miss everything that has to happen before love becomes more than something
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  SPEAKER_00: that we say we believe in.
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  SPEAKER_00: So today we begin with empathy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy is a word that we use a lot,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I'm not sure that we always stop to think about what an extraordinary thing
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  SPEAKER_00: that it actually is.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can never literally become you.
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  SPEAKER_00: I cannot step inside your memory,
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  SPEAKER_00: feel exactly what you feel,
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  SPEAKER_00: or know every experience that shaped the way you see the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yet, somehow, Human beings can reach across that distance.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can listen closely enough that another person's reality begins to feel real to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that may be one of the most important abilities that we have.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think empathy begins when we stop asking only, how would I feel if this happened to me?
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  SPEAKER_00: That question can help, but it has a limitation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not me.
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  SPEAKER_00: What hurts you may not hurt me in exactly the same way.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something I would shrug off might touch an old wound in you that I know nothing about.
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  SPEAKER_00: What looks like a small loss from where I'm standing may represent an entire chapter
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  SPEAKER_00: of your life from where you are.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not how would I feel, but what might this feel like to you?
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's a very different question.
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  SPEAKER_00: It requires imagination,
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  SPEAKER_00: but not the kind where we invent somebody else's feelings and
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  SPEAKER_00: then congratulate ourselves for understanding them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Real empathy has humility in it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It says, I may not know.
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  SPEAKER_00: That may be the beginning of understanding.
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  SPEAKER_00: I remember how easy it is to look at another person's reaction and think
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  SPEAKER_00: that they're overreacting.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've all done that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody becomes upset over something that seems small to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And our first instinct is to measure their pain against our own ruler.
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  SPEAKER_00: But guys, maybe their ruler is different.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe what happened today touched something from 10 years ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they've been holding themselves together all week and this was simply
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  SPEAKER_00: the moment that the thread finally pulled too tight.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe what seems insignificant to us carries a meaning that we've not yet heard.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy doesn't require that we immediately agree with every reaction either.
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  SPEAKER_00: It asks us to stay curious long enough to understand what the reaction is attached to.
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  SPEAKER_00: That word right there, that word matters.
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  SPEAKER_00: Curiosity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy without curiosity can become assumption.
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  SPEAKER_00: We look at someone and think that we already know their story.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're angry so they must be difficult.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're quiet so they must not care.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're afraid so they must be weak.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or they disagree with us So clearly, clearly they failed to understand what is obvious.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a bad one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Human beings are very good at building complete biographies from about 11 seconds
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  SPEAKER_00: of information.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've done it many times.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then every now and then, life gives us the missing piece.
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  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the difficult person becomes the exhausted caregiver.
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  SPEAKER_00: The quiet person becomes someone that's grieving privately.
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  SPEAKER_00: The impatient stranger becomes someone that's trying to get to a hospital.
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  SPEAKER_00: And nothing, nothing about what happened changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: What changes is what we can see.
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  SPEAKER_00: That, that is empathy.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person becomes larger than the moment in which we encountered them.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think this is one reason that storytelling matters so much.
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  SPEAKER_00: A statistic can tell us that thousands of people are suffering.
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  SPEAKER_00: A story introduces us to one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly there's a name,
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  SPEAKER_00: a kitchen, a child who has a favorite toy, a person who worries about their mother.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who laughs at ridiculous things,
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  SPEAKER_00: burns toast,
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  SPEAKER_00: has an old song that they love, and is frightened about what tomorrow may bring.
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  SPEAKER_00: The category becomes a life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And once a life feels real to us, something changes, doesn't it?
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  SPEAKER_00: It becomes harder to dismiss.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is why dehumanization works in the opposite direction.
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  SPEAKER_00: Before we can become comfortable with another person's suffering,
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  SPEAKER_00: we often have to make them smaller,
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  SPEAKER_00: turn them into a label,
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  SPEAKER_00: a problem, a number, a group we talk about rather than people that we listen to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy reverses that.
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  SPEAKER_00: It restores details.
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  SPEAKER_00: It says, wait, there's an entire human life here.
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  SPEAKER_00: What could be happening?
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that we lose judgment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy is not the same thing as approval.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can understand why someone behaves a certain way and still believe that the behavior is on
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  SPEAKER_00: Understanding may be exactly what helps us respond wisely instead of simply reacting.
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  SPEAKER_00: That matters to me because I've talked before about lack of empathy as a kind of malfunction.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way I see it.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we want to understand how people reach a place
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  SPEAKER_00: where another human being no longer feels fully real to them,
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  SPEAKER_00: then empathy deserves serious attention.
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  SPEAKER_00: What strengthens it?
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  SPEAKER_00: What weakens it?
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  SPEAKER_00: We need to know these things.
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  SPEAKER_00: What happens when fear, anger, ideology, trauma, power, or isolation starts shutting it down?
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are not abstract questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: They may help us understand how harm begins,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I also think that empathy needs practice in ordinary life.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to imagine ourselves empathetic when the suffering is dramatic.
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  SPEAKER_00: The harder test may be the person who frustrates us,
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  SPEAKER_00: the person whose choices make no sense to us,
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  SPEAKER_00: the person with whom we disagree strongly.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can we still ask, what's happening inside this person?
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because we plan to surrender our own beliefs,
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  SPEAKER_00: But because understanding another mind is not the same thing as abandoning our own.
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  SPEAKER_00: That distinction could save us a lot of unnecessary cruelty.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is something else about empathy that I think we often miss.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not only about pain.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can enter another person's joy too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone tells us about something that matters deeply to them,
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  SPEAKER_00: something that may not particularly interest us
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  SPEAKER_00: and we can still let their excitement matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: A child shows us a drawing for the 17th time.
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  SPEAKER_00: A friend tells us about an accomplishment that we don't completely understand
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  SPEAKER_00: or someone we love is thrilled by something that would barely register
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  SPEAKER_00: on our own emotional radar.
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  SPEAKER_00: Empathy says, Your joy is real to me because it is real to you.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I really love that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe sharing joy is one of the gentlest ways human beings cross the distance between lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps, perhaps that is what empathy really is.
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  SPEAKER_00: A crossing.
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  SPEAKER_00: We do not leave ourselves behind.
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  SPEAKER_00: We do not become
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  SPEAKER_00: We simply travel far enough toward them that their world stops looking imaginary
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  SPEAKER_00: from where we stand.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then we come back carrying something.
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  SPEAKER_00: A little more understanding.
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  SPEAKER_00: A little less certainty about the story that we had already written.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe enough awareness to respond differently.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow,
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  SPEAKER_00: tomorrow I want to talk about what happens next
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  SPEAKER_00: because empathy can remain entirely internal.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can understand that you hurt and still do nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Compassion is where understanding begins to move.
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  SPEAKER_00: But before we get there,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think empathy deserves this moment on its own because so much of love begins here.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not with agreement.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not with fixing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not even with knowing what to say.
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  SPEAKER_00: It begins when another person becomes fully real to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: When their inner world stops being background scenery in our own story.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we recognize that behind the face in front of us is another consciousness just
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  SPEAKER_00: as deep Complicated, frightened, hopeful, wounded, ridiculous, and alive as our own.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is the first great movement of the love force.
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  SPEAKER_00: The realization that I'm not the only center of experience in the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's another world standing right in front of me.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm willing to listen closely enough, just for a moment, I may be invited inside.
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  SPEAKER_00: How exciting is that, guys?
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  SPEAKER_00: I love you all very, very, very, very, very, very much.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I need you to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: Go out and pass that on, okay?
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  SPEAKER_00: Later, Gators.
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  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
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  SPEAKER_02: Every story, every voice In this love we all rejoice Infinite Threads, here we go.
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  SPEAKER_02: Welcome your friends, enjoy the show.