Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Archives for July 2012

Sympathy, for a politican? No, just empathy, for a human being

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In the dozens of short stories and poems I wrote as an undergrad, the only idea I still remember was a line about how every one of us feels the same things—we just don't feel them at the same time.

So when you're sad, I'm happy. And when I'm scared and lonely, you're flying high and surrounded by friends. And when I'm good, I don't want to eat your bad. And when I'm bad, I avoid you and your fucking good. But we both have been in each other's shoes.

Empathy doesn't require imagination. Usually, it only requires memory, and a willingness to use it.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. is no one I've ever cared about. He has always seemed like something of a hack to me, and public officials do and should get less leeway than private citizens with unexplained absences or erratic behavior.

Yet, to mock someone's mental trouble—which has proven more than tempting for scandal-scarred Chicagoans and political pundits around the nation—is to willfully refuse to remember the last time you got uncomfortably in touch with your own psychological vulnerability. The last time you noticed just how elaborately, haphazardly, nervously, creatively, tenuously, the boat you sail on an even keel has been slapped, glued, nailed, taped, strung, clamped and bungeed together.

One gust of wind from a new direction ….

It's not sympathy with which we should temper our suspicion, but empathy that we must go out of our way to feel, just on the odd chance that this is a human being who feels the same things that you do—just not at the same time.

Fair warning to Facebook friends: When you say something asinine, I will let you know

by // 13 Comments

Dear Facebook Friends,

I should have written this years ago, but it didn't occur to me that I needed to: When you use Facebook to post imbecilic, foolish or hateful things, I don't believe it is my duty to ignore them, any more than if you stood upon a table at a Reunion of All My Friends and shouted them at the top of your lungs.

So Jered, when you blustered last year that Tiger Woods would never win another golf tournament again and I told you you were full of shit and you asked, "What's your problem?"—I have no problem. I was simply responding to your now demonstrably incorrect opinion with my own now demonstrably correct one.

And Amber, when I took issue with your post about how motorists ought to behave when they see signs for a lane-merge a mile down the road—I'll admit I was having a rather slow day at the office—why did you take umbrage at my contradicting you "especially on MY Facebook page"? You posted on YOUR page, but it came up on MY feed. Do you really think it's untoward of me to offer my polite disagreement? Or do you only want to hear from me when I "Like"?

And Al, when you posted that unbelievable vitriol about Muslim Americans, and I and a bunch of others pounced on your sorry ass, why did you tell us that a more proper reaction on our part would have been to silently dismiss you as an asshole and "move on"? No, the proper reaction was to remind you in front of all your other friends that you're a better guy than that. (Which is why, I hope, that you eventually took the post down. And thanks for that.)

Now, Friends: I may choose to ignore an errant post of yours, if I feel your ignorance is harmless, or if am having a busy day. Or if I feel that what you are posting is beneath contempt. But in that latter case I really ought to unfriend you—as you ought to do me if you don't ever want to hear a discouraging word.

But Facebook is an increasingly important form of community—important to me, important to you—and if we don't call each other out when one of us says something dumb on Facebook, then we'll have the same kind of bullshit community there that we have everywhere else.

We don't have a bullshit community everywhere else, you say?

Bullshit, I say.

Your Facebook Friend,

David Murray