Empathy in a Time of Tyranny

Holding the vision as the world burns.

Image by author, created with AI

“Are you CRYING?!” my coworker shout-whispers as I stand behind the bar, frozen mid-shake, watching Tara play a real doll on the TV mounted in the corner. Tara is another staff member who I know has aspirations of becoming an actress. And here she is on TV. In a non-speaking role—not that it matters—because her face is plastered all over the screen. Of course I’m crying! Why isn’t everybody?

My coworker watches me do facial theatrics to keep the tears at bay and sighs. The fact that my heart is exploding with pride is an inconvenience to him. Table five requires their dirty martinis. 

The world needs more empathy, they say. We need to care more, to not turn away from suffering, to react compassionately. It will better society, they say.

To which I say: Good luck getting anything done.

---

The theater is electric with anticipation as the light fades and the orchestra trills a sweet invitation. I feel the percussion building in my chest like a second heartbeat, provoking a livewire of recollection. First a trickle, then a flood. 

Long hours in the costume shop bent over a sewing machine, the excitement-tinged panic of opening night, camaraderie that declared, These people are my forever family, which was true. Until the next show. 

There can be no greater feeling than this, 21-year-old New York City-dwelling me says from the bottom of a memory. I remember that once upon a time, this was my magic, and for a moment, I let this feeling be true.

By the time the actors say their opening lines, I am sobbing–as silently as possible–the tears on my neck turning my collar soggy. I exit the theater, swollen and puffy-eyed, no doubt leaving other audience members questioning whether we watched the same performance. Over the years, the shows change, but my reaction to them stays the same.

This is a tick in the “pro” column of empathy. Potent, heart-swelling, rib-cracking feels—reminding you that you’re alive.

---

I read somewhere that empathy is a superpower and fantasize that I am a witch with enviable magick, more valuable than it is embarrassing. I scan my life for examples and notice how often people share extremely personal secrets with me. Once upon a time, when curfew arrived with the clicking on of streetlights, I cared about things like this. Because secrets meant inclusion.

Now, I get the sense that everyone is just seeking affordable therapy. 

Sometimes, I swell with self-importance about being a great listener. This is an admirable quality, right? Something others might want but not come close to replicating? It’s a superpower, I remind myself, as I’m cornered in conversation until my bladder explodes, with nary a pause in my captor’s storytelling to make my escape.

“People just seem to bond with me,” I say in passing to a friend, shrugging like it’s no big deal.  

“Why do you always make them cry?” he asks me in response.

Image by Huseyin Bostanci for Canva Pro

Elizabeth Gilbert comes to my hometown to talk about her book, Big Magic. A friend of my mother’s suggests I take her extra ticket, knowing, as she does, that I’m a fan. Liz’s words instantly connect with the stymied artist inside me, the small, scared inner child who just wants to finger-paint the world. I feel like she has set some caged part of me free, and I’m tempted to rush the stage and hug her. But that’s crazy, so I sit in my seat and quietly cry. I cry so hard there’s snot that I’m ill-prepared to deal with. My mother’s friend shrivels with mortification, and I get the message that my extreme emotions make others uncomfortable. 

I troubleshoot the problem by warning the people in my life that I am strangely sensitive, wish I weren’t, sorry about that. My best friend responds by changing the channel whenever ASPCA commercials come on. We’ve cried together during many an animated film while his daughter rolled her eyes, so he gets me.

The next time I see my mother, however, she dives into a story about an old dog who always gets overlooked for adoption by the families who come to the shelter. I ask her to stop, but she ignores my pleas and barrels ahead. When she finishes the story, I am sobbing. 

“But it’s a happy ending!” she cries, looking at me bewildered, like I am an alien being she’ll never understand.

I decide maybe I’m not good at telling people what I need. I come to this conclusion while on a date with a man who is viciously reprimanding his employees on speakerphone for my benefit. While he shoots me an indelicate smile of the get-a-load-of-this-guy variety, I try not to throw up. 

---

The struggle comes to a head in election years. It wasn’t always this way. Or maybe I’m just more aware now that most of the emotions I feel don’t actually belong to me. Back then, I just lived every day with what I thought was a wicked hangover.

My mom wants me to be more involved. She wants me to write political postcards and engage in intellectual discourse about surviving a literal Handmaid’s Tale and be indignant every day by 9 am. She tells me how a recent school shooting in which four people died was later described as a “fact of life.” I feel like an elephant is standing on my chest.

I wonder if she’s a sadist or if she just forgets in her quest for crusade companions that her only child will spend the entire revolution rocking back and forth in the corner, and that’s no good to anybody. I know it’s nonsensical to most of my friends and loved ones that I metaphorically wrap myself daily in a pillar of white light and have deleted social media like a true misanthrope. But when people spew vitriol and call each other the sorts of names we used in elementary school, it makes a messy mosaic of my heart.

I think of the name-calling days whenever I walk by the house with the sign reading, “Joe and the ho gotta go.” I wonder how many of us will die with the emotional intelligence we had as sixth graders.

For my mom, fighting is the antidote to complacency. For me, complacency is the key to survival. I can’t offer the world any more than the vision that good will prevail.

I’ll show up. I’ll vote with my big bleeding heart. And I’ll trust in the vision. 

For now, though, I must retreat. I will wander in the desert, lose myself in fantasy, bury my head in the sand and hold the vision. I will anoint myself with protection oil, don smoky quartz and tourmaline and disappear from the world.

If you need me, I’ll be in a blanket fort with a basket of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, reading about witches. I’ll be gluing pieces of myself back together with a steady stream of Ryan Reynold’s movies and building up my mental armor because that’s the only guarantee I’m getting out of this alive.

And from deep within the protective cocoon of my blanket fort, with every living cell of my sloppy heart, I’ll be holding the vision.

---

Fellow empaths, how are you self-soothing in these turbulent times? If you have a favorite ritual or guided meditation, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

---

---

One way to hold the vision is to bless the space you’re already in. In other words, practice gratitude for that pillow fort. This will help . . .