Empathy Meter

Over the holidays I've got hit with a little bit of grief over the estrangement of some folks in my life. Some recent, some for several years. And I was thinking about one person in particular, and the reason for the estrangement. I'm very vocal on social media about how voting for certain people, supporting certain talking heads literally puts me in danger. And 1. some people don't seem to get it (your actions/support causes me REAL harm), 2. some people get very upset when I set boundaries like "if you support this person, you are not my friend so please 'unfriend' me."

Anyway, going back to my ponderings of this one person, I had a realization. I have a great deal of empathy, and I assume that others do as well. But they don't. Empathy is somewhat like intelligence in that we all have different levels of it- most of us have enough to function, more or less, as adults in the world, but there is a broad spectrum of levels. And this person, I assumed had the same as me due to similarities in our backgrounds, but when I thought about it, this person has shown me over the years how little empathy they have, at least for me. According to our friend Oxford, empathy is the "ability to understand and share the feeling of another", and I will expand that to "experiences" of another.

So, I made an assumption that this person was capable of understanding how hurt, and how in danger I was when I talked about my experience. And it hurt when they didn't get it. But when I reviewed old conversations, there wasn't really a time where they did, unless it happened to be an experience they spoke of and I was able to interject a "me too", but even when I tried to share with them about some of my personal experiences, they were quick to interrupt with, "well, you didn't have it as bad as me." How would you know friend when you've never let me tell you MY stories?

I know this person loves me as best they can. I have no, "but" to sum things up with and round off with a silver lining, at least for today. I wish them well. And I will put my emotional energy into those who are capable of empathy, cuz damn, these days I don't have a lot of emotional or mental energy to spare.