Mr. Jack was a paratrooper during World War II. He helped liberate a concentration camp. I saw the pictures he personally took while standing in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. By the time I met him, he was 85, in a nursing home, struggling to dress himself.
As I watched him one morning laboring to put on his shoes and socks, I thought of myself. I play soccer, and the day after a game my knees and back don’t cooperate. It takes longer than normal, and a lot more grunting, to reach my feet.
I could see myself on his bed with Mr. Jack, struggling alongside him to get dressed...thankful that for me it’s one day a week...painfully aware that for Mr. Jack it’s every day he wakes up.
It was one of the seminal moments of my life. Without knowing it, Mr. Jack taught me empathy.
Empathy is the ability to find a piece of yourself in someone else.
This bears repeating because empathy is one of those words that gets tossed around so casually that it’s lost all meaning.
Empathy is the ability to find a piece of yourself in someone else.
When you find a piece of yourself in someone else, you connect to that person. It allows us to show others we care, not because we have to, but because we have even a modest bit of insight into their situation. It is not pity. It is understanding.
Empathy is what keeps us from judging too quickly. It tempers our hostility. Empathy demands that we know ourselves and we make an effort to get to know others...to make a connection. Empathy separates us from the animals.
It is easy to connect to people just like you. Perhaps the most human act of all is to connect with someone with whom you have no obvious connection.
Can you see a piece of yourself in the mother struggling to control her kids in the grocery store? The refugee dropped into a new city with minimal grasp of the language? The old man taking too long to put on his shoes and socks because you have other tasks to get to?
Hero is another overworked word. Mr. Jack is the guy I think of when I think of the Greatest Generation. He did things I can only read about. He was a hero. I am not. But one morning every week, Mr. Jack and I are connected, if only at the knees.
Do you have questions about a specific situation in your life? Topics you want addressed in future essays? Let me know about it in the comment section.
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