Freshman year of college I was in a philosophy class and I was giving some sort of group presentation. The prof asked my group “what do you think is your purpose in life?” And none of them really had an answer while I just said “to make the world a better place for those who come after us” because in my mind that’s just the obvious answer. The prof looked kind of taken aback that I just had an answer on the ready and was like “Why? What’s your motivation?”
In that moment I realized I was in front of a lecture hall of privileged students. I was surrounded by people who didn’t know poverty or desperation like I had. I clawed my way here on scholarships while they were legacy kids or trust fund babies. In that moment it clicked in my head that there’s this level of empathy that you can only gain when you have absolutely nothing to lose. A level of empathy that only the impoverished have. A level of empathy that screams out that you have to fight to make things better even if it doesn’t benefit you. It’s a concept that you can only really grasp when you have nothing to lose and the kids before me hadn’t known that pain. They hadn’t developed that kind of empathy.
My only answer that I could give the prof was “Why wouldn’t I?”
A level of empathy that screams out that you have to fight to make things better even if it doesn’t benefit you.
all the angry rich people in the notes:
also to all the people who are arguing that class privilege has nothing to do with empathy, studies show that richer people have less empathy
i know u dont like to listen to us commoners but… lmao
oh this one of them good posts where the basic message is “treat people better” and this causes the most controversy
One of the first standalone events I ever planned was a donor drive for a young child. One of the reporters from the paper I worked at had written a story about him & his family and after reading it I was both moved and furious. The parents were both working full-time and half/pick-up work on top of raising one healthy son and one younger son who had cancer. I didn’t have any money, I had already been on the registry myself for years at that point (so obviously I wasn’t a match or I’d have been called) but I did have something: time.
So I gathered up info, started making some calls and before I knew it had everything needed from a venue to phlebotomists to decorations, a mini flier stuffed in with the payroll cheque of the largest employees in the area, radio/paper ads, and made a sandwich board I wore around the Farmer’s Market in the few weeks before the drive. I would get asked left and right if I was related to the kid, if he was my student or neighbor or family friends or if I was being paid and the #1 response to my “Nope, he’s just a local kid who needs a transplant, I’m doing it because I can and his family should be spending all the time they can with him, so with their permission I started this drive to help.”?
“So if you don’t know this kid at all and aren’t getting money why are you doing all of this?”
Because I can. Because I don’t need to know someone to help them. Because it infuriates me that for them to try and save their kid, they miss out of that very life they want to save. Because their situation isn’t one I have personal experience with doesn’t invalidate me from being able to empathize and care and offer what I can. It isn’t much, but it’s what I can do and what I feel like I should do.
After the drive, I was crying in my car absolutely beyond frustration at the turnout. With all the media, payroll fliers, posters, etc. I’d figured we’d get 500+. We got 86. The regional manager of the saw me and congratulated me on a successful drive and I was like “Thanks for saying that even though we both know it wasn’t.” Before I said anything else she said “STOP. We just had a booth at a large 3 day event and didn’t break 25 for the entire weekend. By any measure, this was a successful event.”
I decided on the spot to keep running drives and volunteering and beating the drum. I ran larger events with more groups participating, did small events, got everyone I knew to sign up and kept on moving. That young boy did find a match through a different drive elsewhere, thank everything, and more encouraging is that several of the drives I coordinated found donor matches with at least 3 successful transplants. I didn’t know any of those patients either, but neither did the donors and they still signed up because of the chance they’d be a match for someone in the world.
A lot of us are motivated to mitigate the suffering of others, not to increase the comfort of ourselves. I may not be able to buy groceries with the shaky smiles of gratitude or knee-level hugs, but those things feed your very core of your being and fill your heart to bursting.
I’m an atheist, yet the Prayer of St Francis evoked such a strong feeling in me that I’ve tweaked it and have it as a future tattoo design.
I will be an instrument of peace
Where there is hatred, I will bring love;
Where there is injury, justice;
Where there is illness, healing;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
As I walk this path, I will strive all my days
Not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to give love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in sharing that we are are made One,
And it is in Love that we are made eternal.
I don’t understand how so many people require so much more reason or reward to simply be kind and care about each other. Be compassionate, care about others more than you do about yourself, and offer help where you can.
Reblogging again to note that the study cited in the link is out of the Berkeley psych department as one of the projectsin their ongoing study on what makes people happy, which they have found to be making other people happy.
