Empathy 405: What I Learned Outside My Gate

A  couple weeks ago, I told you what a woman  named Ruby Paine had taught me in the past year about the limits of my own  responses in teaching me the internal experience of characters whose families had lived In economic circumstances much different from my own.  You asked ... Well, Henrietta asked. And I promised you more.

Today I'm going to tell you about  the other big lesson in empathy I gained from my first year at the Resource Center, and what that lesson means to our writing.

There are course materials: watch the film below. For extra credit, read The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, by Bruce Perry.

My understanding had always been that traumatic experiences changed the way we thought about subsequent experiences. I also knew that early events could have a profound effect on a person's life. I just didn't know how profound.

The flaw in my thinking lay in the phrase I just wrote: "traumatic experiences changed the way we thought..." I now know that traumatic experiences change - on the cellular level - the brains we have to think with. Our earliest experiences, those  that take place during infancy or earlier, form us in ways that will affect us for the rest of our lives.

A character born into a particular economic class will likely operate on assumptions she never subjects to rational thought. A character whose infancy was marked by the trauma of violence or extreme neglect responds to impulses that come from a place where rational thought is impossible.

Doesn't this explain why some novels fall flat? Take, for clarity's sake, an extreme example: our character, Lulu, has lived a continual heartbreak that started when her father punched her pregnant mother in the belly before she was born. Now she is about to jump off the bridge when a stranger walks up and explains The Four Spiritual Laws. "Oh," she says, "I see." And her life is changed forever.

There is a way to change Lulu's life. It just doesn't involve a big answer to a big question, at least not at first. Otherwise, Jesus could have gotten to the point with the woman at the well a lot quicker, and Clarence Oddbody could have made a few salient points about George Baileys wonderful life and run the credits.

It turns out the big healer is relationships. (Isn't that handy for those of us who write stories about husbands and wives and parents and children and angels and Jimmy Stewart?) Other things help as well, like touch (think of a mother's loving hand, and Clarence's arm around the shoulder), and like rhythmic movement (think of a father rocking his child and Clarence and George walking the streets of Bedford Falls).

I urge you to watch the film.  It's shorter than the one I shared last time. Once you've seen it, I dare you you to try not reading the book.

Raise Your Standard

"Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life."  - Brian Andreas

One of those angels for me was a professor I had in college, who used to tell us, shout at us  all the time, "Pay attention!!!" Thank you Christa Allan for reminding me in your excellent Carpe Annum interview on Monday.

This professor is the reason why watching The Dead Poets Society always feels a little bit like going home. He was my Mr. Keating, and while he never, as I recall, whispered "carpe diem" to us, that was the message.

2013 is our "Carpe Annum," our time to take hold of our lives and our careers -  and I hope it's yours too.

But please remember to also seize the day, to grasp it long enough to catch the color, feel the texture. Please, especially watch the people.  Go to the grocery store and stare at the people in line long enough to learn their secrets. (Stealthily, averting your eyes just long enough to not get caught.)

I recently read a book that has me looking at every person I meet with X-ray glasses, and it has revolutionized the way I see other people.  The ways we get it wrong when we judge each other. The ways we buy into the image reflected back to us and misjudge ourselves.

The book is The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog, by Bruce Perry. I dare you to read it.

Paying attention is a way of planting a flag in the soil of each day, and declaring: "This is my life, all of it, and it all matters, the shiny bits and the grass stains."

Today I hope you raise your standard high