tao
of Dana:
Life Extraordinary
There is only one valuable thing you need to have in life to make it
extraordinary.
Empathy.
The ability to sit in someone’s shoes and feel what they are feeling.
The ability to suspend your own way of seeing life and see it through
the eyes of someone else.
Without empathy, you can’t be in love.
Without empathy, you can’t create art.
Without empathy, you won’t have success.
Without empathy, you cease to be human, in an evolved sense.
Being empathetic does not mean you have to take what everyone is
offering you. I used to confuse empathy with being a victim.
Empathy is actually all about being extraordinarily human and deeply
integrated in life.
Empathy is heroic.
Empathy doesn’t cause you confusion, it creates clarity. That’s
because being empathetic and sitting in the shoes of another person
shows you that you can see that the world isn’t all about you. It means
that some people have bad days, have a bad sense of humour at times or
have trauma in their lives. It means that you can understand what other
people are going through even though they can’t actually express it in
words.
Empathy means that you can connect.
It’s a two way street.
You can’t be the only one.
The most valuable lessons in my life have come from people who have
shown me that they lack empathy.
It is shocking and scary when you realize that some people can’t get
beyond themselves, especially people who care about you. Their lives are
such that they can’t see their way out of their own way.
Every person I have met that lacks empathy instead has a lot of
pride, a lot of mis-guided anger and a lot of fear guiding their lives.
Usually, its all fear. That fear comes at you and spins your head
around, because it comes out of left field.
If you have been on a roller coaster of a relationship with someone-
friend, family or romantic, either one- and you can’t come to grips with
making it right, I bet you empathy is missing.
If you feel like…
* It’s not comfortable, really, ever.
* You come last.
* You are unreasonable for having feelings.
* You are not sure where you stand.
* You walk on eggshells.
* You are a hapless victim of circumstances.
Empathy is not there.
Have compassion.
And no matter how much you care, it doesn’t matter. No matter how
much effort you could make, it makes no difference.
Have compassion.
You can’t come up against a brick wall and expect it to hug you and
tell you that you are OK.
You slam against a brick wall.
So does all your emotion, all your happiness and all your joy.
You can’t let life teach you that empathy is bad. Empathy is
beautiful. You have to trust that if you walk through life with an open
heart and do all you can to have compassion and feel for others and lift
them higher that you will find your people. Your people have empathy for
you on that same high level. They always come.
My life is graced with empathy. And when I slam up against a brick
wall it hurts sometimes but it reminds me that we all have a lot to
contend with in life. That doesn’t mean I sit in front of the brick wall
and try to break it down.
People can feel
I used to.
Have you?
Have you ever tried so hard to break down the walls surrounding
someone that you felt yourself wither in the process?
I have, for sure. It was the largest mistake I have ever made in my
life. It tore down my career, my friendships and my health.
You don’t need to make this your story.
People without empathy don’t react to your pain, so your
self-destruction is very unimpressive to them because they just can’t
feel it.
People can feel you or they can’t. It’s not your fault. Don’t suffer
for it.
Don’t internalize a lack of empathy. Usually the people who lack
empathy also don’t treat themselves well, either. They usually don’t
like themselves . That’s a dark and horrible place to be. It’s very
lonely.
You need to have compassion.
Compassion is the best cure.
Vilifying people creates less empathy in your own life. It shrinks
your space, closes your heart and makes life feel like a small black
space rather than the infinite greatness that it actually is in full.
You need to be open to be creative, to know love and to feel free.
Start walking through life with the kind of gratitude that moves
mountains. Start making life more of a connection, and show up to be a
part of that connection fully.
You are not living in Utopia thinking that people who care about you
will show you that they care about you.
You are not unreasonable to think that people should think about
other things but themselves.
Stay in that space of love no matter what you come up against. Where
you get no love back, love anyway. I really believe that’s the only way
we can change our world, each of us, in extraordinary ways.
- Dana |