Microblog: Empathy Is About Standing in Someone Else’s Shoes
I’ve been heads down with my book and stopped watching the news long ago—I can be empathetic to a fault.⠀
My Thoughts On George Floyd
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I didn’t know what happened with George Floyd so I dug through videos and news outlets to understand what happened that day. Most of all, I was trying to make sense of the situation.⠀
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But that never happened.⠀
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I watched the clip over and over, where he calls out for his momma and I broke down in tears. In nursing homes, in the last moments of a person’s life, it’s common for nurses to hear people call out for their mothers. Some believe that as we start in the womb, it’s the circle of life coming full circle.⠀
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Whatever it is, I know that we all felt the pain of George Floyd and the heinous treatment towards him. I couldn’t help but think of the circumstances. He moved to MN for work. Whatever work he found, it was gone with COVID-19, like 40 million other jobs. Was life hard for him after 2 months of COVID? Likely. Would anyone who had access to “free” money not have used it, circumstantially? There are so many ways people “come up” in society. How do we define one as more wrong than another?⠀
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Things need to change. But how? I’m not entirely sure. One way is by voting—as flawed as our political system is, it’s still hope.⠀
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The power of communities joining to fight for equal rights is powerful. Around the world, we’ve seen a man slowly die, unjustly by another man. Both men were brought into this world by their mothers. But somehow, one man was privileged to do harm to the other. While I am not black, I am also not white. I have experienced racism but it is in no way the same. I will never fully understand.⠀
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But I also am human. I am a mother and I know how much it hurts to hear my son cry for me when he’s in pain. And that’s pain, not the end of his life. We all have the capability to feel and empathize. The only people that don’t feel empathy consistently, are clinical psychopaths.⠀
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When George Floyd cried out for help and for his momma, he reached every one of us to the core. I hope that this brings the change we need in our hurting communities because no matter what color, age, religion, or gender, we are all human and we are in this life, together.♥️
