Empathy

(def: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another )

“A lot of us know that so many people have it worse, so we don’t want to say, ‘God, I’m sad’, or ‘I’m scared',” said American author and vulnerability guru Brené Brown last week. “But empathy and compassion are infinite, and we don’t have to withhold our own fear and feelings in order to be empathetic toward other people. There’s enough empathy to go around, as long as we keep practising it.”

We’re all struggling. It’s surprisingly tough, in my case being someone who still has a job and whose battle is to try to get the work done while my two kids are bouncing off the walls and each other – but only so tough. The news from outside my four walls is telling me that others have got it much tougher. There are countless stories out there that can move you to tears, rage or despair.

There are the warnings, for instance, that the current shutdown will likely trigger its own epidemic of domestic abuse – in Hubei province, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone. We hear reports of doctors in this country who have already died. We learn of people who have not been able to say goodbye to their loved ones, or even properly gather for their funerals. There’s the person with a terminal cancer diagnosis who, now isolated, has had to rethink what they think a good death is. News stories ask us to contemplate what might happen if there’s an outbreak in the refugee camps in Idlib – “a catastrophe waiting to happen” – or tell us that India’s largest slum, in Mumbai, has recorded its first coronavirus case.

Then there are the stories from people we know – the friend whose father has passed, someone whose cousin died of Covid-19 in his late forties, the autistic neighbour who is worried that he can’t cope with the isolation, the couple whose nightly fights are making them wish they had separated long ago.

The stories keep on coming. It feels like empathy is a thing we are going to have to fight for in a world where, because we don’t have enough ventilators, too many of the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, are being warned that "Do Not Resuscitate" is a likely future. It also seems like empathy is what we are going to need in order to hold on to our humanity in all this.

Our own troubles are put in perspective. I keep telling myself we, in my family, are lucky. We’ve got it good – we have food on the table, health for now, and each other. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels hard. It feels as if every day in this household I’m driven to some small new brink. It’s easy to forget that the most important thing we can do is be empathic to the people we are close to, and also to ourselves. For empathy also requires us to connect with and understand our own feelings, whether they be scared, anxious, confused, grieving, angry, worrying for loved ones. That’s why I’m not going round saying this is all lovely, and that lockdown has been a much-needed break from normal life in which I have been able to smell the roses and play happy families.

It’s also why I like what Brené Brown has to say about this moment. “We're anxious, we're uncertain, we are a lot of us afraid. And let me tell you this for sure, and I know this from my life, I know this from 20 years of research... If you don't name what you're feeling, if you don't own the feelings, and feel them, they will eat you alive.”

Digitally overloaded

(def. feeling like the online world is doing our heads in)

The internet was always a big, overwhelming place with a lot of stuff going on. But never before has it seemed that there is so much happening that you really should be connected with, in a FOMO sort of way. We are swamped by a deluge of fitness YouTubers to sweat with, memes to share, home-schooling aids, binge-worthy box sets, Zoom parties, self-improving courses.

The digital world has become one frantic, online bucket list of things to cram in before you die. Of course, all this can be beautiful, moving, uplifting and supporting. And yet ... it’s also exhausting, a struggle to concentrate and makes me want, more than ever, to switch the damn thing off.

See you on the other side of analogue. Hopefully next week.