Category: "Travel"
December 05, 2004
Empathy
Last night (Friday), Mike took me to see The Nutcracker. His friend Margaret performed I think 4 different parts in it and we went to the cast party afterwards. A friend of hers and I got to talking about a variety of things, including travel. She asked if I could travel anywhere in the world, where would I go? I thought about it a little bit and since I've already been to Europe, which is a Westernized area, I thought it would be neat to go to someplace completely different to get a broader perspective of the world. Mike and I have previously talked about going to Japan or Thailand next year.
Mike and I have a friend who is visiting Thailand right now. He has been keeping a blog of his journies (he left for New Zealand in September and then off to Thailand a few weeks ago). Anyway, I finally got around to reading his Thailand entries today and his latest account is quite thought provoking. He passed by a deadly motorcycle accident in a community that has no ambulance and visited the poorest community he has ever seen except on PBS Specials.
Tonight (Saturday), Mike took me to see the 3D IMAX version of Polar Express in San Francisco. I get cold very easily and was clutching my jacket closed as we walked out of the theater to the parking garage. We passed by a homeless guy asking for change as we reached the end of a cross walk. I said, "Sorry" and continued on.
I'm filled with so much empathy all the time. It breaks my heart to pass homeless people. Sometimes I give money, sometimes I don't. Last weekend in Santa Cruz, we walked by a guy asking for money for food. I told him that I actually didn't have any on me. I was carrying a Jamba Juice though, and he asked for that. I said sure, took one last sip, and handed it to him.
I'm fortunate in that I don't have to see it all that often. My dad was homeless for a while and I think about him and various experiences he shared with me all the time. Today as I passed by the homeless guy in the cold, I recalled my dad saying that the number one thing for survival in the winter is a warm coat. It honestly breaks my heart, and I got to thinking, would I be able to handle traveling to an area where it is much more prominent? I'm sure that it would give me a new perspective and understanding, but it would be very emotionally difficult to endure.
A friend and I were sitting at Subway one day and I saw a guy get off one bus and run across the street to catch another bus that was starting to leave. I muttered "wait for him, wait for him" or something like that and was relieved when I saw that the second bus did indeed see him and stopped pulling away and waited for him. I expressed my relief to my friend and he asked, "Would you have given him a ride if the bus hadn't waited?" I said no, but I was still glad to see that the bus waited because I know what it's like to have a bus take off as I'm running toward it. He commented that when he sees something like that, he just thinks, "sucks to be him". But I don't think that way, I typically try to look at things from each person's perspective and I genuinely feel empathy for sucky situations.
Posted by Rebecca at December 5, 2004 01:34 AM