A band plays their final symphony on a boat surrounded by the vast calm ocean that’s destined for death. Perhaps they played to take their minds off of death or to introduce themselves to the awaiting spirits. Regardless of their purpose, they greet death with a passionate song.
What starts as an orchestra turns into a quarter… trio… duet… then a solo. If Death didn’t wear gloves, you could’ve heard soft clapping. Alas, there was no applause for the final show except wind gusts, rolling tears, and muttered sobs.
The Punchline
I’ve never considered myself empathetic. Far from being emotionless, I understood when friends were sad, angry, or despaired, yet I was never able to relate to their pain.
Don’t misunderstand, I will be there for a person in times of need. I will comfort them and perform acts of service to ease their burden. But, I can never cry with them or share their anger, as others do when the roles are reversed.
It’s like that feeling when everyone laughs at a joke that you don’t understand. You blend in by fake-laughing but simultaneously feel clueless as everybody else has figured out the punchline. However, you fail to comprehend the humor in it.
Tricuspid and Pulmanory Valves
While there are four valves to the human heart, it can ultimately do two things: intake and outtake.
48 hours before a flight, set on going away for a long time to a far distant land, and surrounded by goodbyes. I was blessed to have been sent off by friends who are one “I will miss you” away from tears, yet I couldn’t share the grief.
I’m unsettled by the possibility of being a brick wall of ungratefulness. My bricks were not meant to be arranged like this. I knew I would miss my friends but my heart didn’t mourn and ache as much as theirs.
Months later, 5 AM, a blinking taxi illuminates a semi-dark alleyway in Japan. In the back seat, companions who’ve had too much to drink lay, while the front seat awaits my tired body.
When you take strangers, put them in a foreign land, and bond them over asphalt, gossip, and kindness; you will receive companionship that feels as if it always was there. But in turn, the goodbye will hurt more than ever.
Did I truly feel sorrow over the friends I’ve made in Japan or was my fear of loneliness responsible for whatever I felt? If it’s the prior, what made this more overwhelming than the airport encounter?
The lights blink brighter, a friend starts puking on the curbside.
I could come up with 43 justifications and none of them would answer my question…
I wonder if I was truly empathetic, would I see the world differently? Would my relationships be deeper? Would I be kinder?
I need to learn about empathy, I need my heart to use all of its four valves.
What’s Empathy All About Anyways?
Empathy is defined as the ability to understand what another person is feeling. To “see the world through the eyes of others rather than your world reflected in their eyes” as Psychologist Carl Rogers would put it.
However, there is a major overlooked flaw in this definition. Empathy –within this interpretation– assumes that a person can fully understand someone’s situation and grasp their feelings.
Thus, being unempathetic solely relies on your social awareness or experience. This interpretation monopolizes empathy for those who have had the most traumatic of lives or are emotionally intelligent.
This means that for people like me, the inability to pinpoint the exact emotion or not having experienced canon events implies that we lack empathy. In earnest, it is not that far from how, I and many others, perceive our shortcomings about the subject.
Similar to how you can’t represent Mother Nature in quarterly spreadsheets, it is impossible to model human emotions. The closest professionals have gotten to interpreting empathy is through two theories: Simulation Theory and Theory (sometimes called mindreading) Theory.
Simulation theory explains that when we attempt to empathize with someone, we attempt to simulate and imagine how one would feel in such situations. For example, if a friend loses their parents, simulation theory describes that the way we would empathize with another is to imagine the death of our parents.
On the other hand, Theory theory implies logical reasoning and assumptions to work our way to another person’s emotional situation. Rather than attempt to mimic your parents’ death, you would attempt to logically understand how that is a horrible event from your friends’ POV.
Regardless of which theory you gravitate to, both choices require a person to have a noticeable repository of feelings and life experiences.
This still leaves us with a bugging issue: there is no way to accurately simulate or understand a person’s emotions without experience.
On Learning Empathy
If you were to turn to Google for internet help, the dozen advice articles will share the same message: “Keep conversing and having an open mind.”
Supposedly, not only will this nurture sympathy, but it can also help individuals with low emotional intelligence to increase their metaphorical emotional IQ.
But once again, this advice implies empathy can only be gained by having extroverted inclinations — in contrast to introverted traits. In my personal experience, that is a false statement. Introverts tend to have an abundance of empathy for people they hold dear.
However, it cannot be denied that there is some element of truth to this advice. It seems that the more exposure you have to others –especially those with different beliefs and cultures than yours– the more you learn empathy.
Yohohoho…
I’ve experienced this firsthand. The most recent time I’ve cried –an act I haven’t done in more than a decade– happened only after I’ve radically changed my living situation.
Leaving my entire life at home and armed with two suitcases, I’ve relocated to Japan to start a new life. There, I met –and will meet– dozens of people, each one unique.
If I wasn’t learning about Japanese etiquette, I was experiencing Kyrgyzstan's childhood media, cooking Italian family recipes, learning Czech, and participating in Netherlands social games.
In the constant current of novelty, I was swept away by change. And with it, a seed of clinginess was rooting itself. I was afraid of losing everyone I’ve befriended so far and gutted by the thought that anyone after this wouldn’t compare.
Then on a random day in July, watching One Piece of all shows, I found myself sobbing violently. It was an episode regarding the backstory of Brook, a recurring supportive character, and how tragic his past life was.
Brook possesses the power of self-revival and it is the same power that caused him his biggest pain. After a surprise attack against his pirate crew, the Rumbar Pirates were mortally poisoned.
Due to their musical nature (and other plot reasons I cannot spoil), Brook and his crew decided that if they were to die on the open calm sea, they might as well pass away with a symphony. And so, the crew played their favorite tune “Bink’s Sake” until their final breath.
Soon enough, the tune goes from a full-blown orchestra to a quartet, a trio, a duet, and then… a solo. Brook was blessed by resurrecting but cursed to see his companions drop, body by body. One could only imagine the utter misery of aimlessly floating in the calm sea, on the same boat where it all happened, and unable to escape for 50 years.
At that moment, I saw myself in Brook. I knew that I had and would have to mourn the goodbyes of friends both back home and in Japan. Friends would leave and only their ghosts would remain accompanying me as I wander Japan for time to come.
Then, it clicked.
I could tell I was actively experiencing strong empathy for the first time. Even if it was a fictional character, I understood the complex emotions of the situation and was even able to relate.
As for Brook, he is now happily liberated from his misery, sailing the seas with a new crew, and looking forward to fulfilling an old promise. As for me, I’ve made peace with it.
Empathy is Forever a Work in Progress
At the time of writing this, I am in the middle of change. Nearly my entire social life is in airport terminals or inside internet cables buried deep within the oceans. On top of that, I’ve moved to a new place that I’ll learn to call home.
In “No More What Ifs”, written by Lotus Juice, vocalist Lyn Inaizumi sings “People come and they go. Some people may want to stay with you, though.”
While the lyrics mostly refer to the story they belong to (Go play Persona 5), there is also merit to the song when viewed in a bubble. Especially the two lines stuck with me the most as they relate to the subject at hand.
It feels redundant and evident to say, but in life, people truly come and go, and only a handful stay with you. I can’t count how many strangers I never saw again, long-term friends whom I fell out with, and the unbreakable bonds I built over the years.
This is not an essay about loneliness and the ebb and flow of companionship, yet for me, it and empathy go hand in hand. If one hand can’t clap then empathy cannot be learned or acquired without someone else.
Conclusion
It has been more than 40 days since I began writing this jumbled collection of thoughts on empathy. Part One Piece tribute, part diary, and part problem solving, I would say writing this hasn’t gotten me closer to my goal than I have started.
Yet, almost in some irony, I’ve never felt more empathetic. While writing this, I consulted with many friends about empathy, and how they perceive it, and that has led to some profound conversations I would’ve never had before.
I’ve learned that some despise their emotional susceptibility, while others believe empathy is a wordless bond that intertwines humans together. Some saw it as a weakness while others saw it as a strength, and some even said that I had more empathy than I credit for.
In those moments, I felt that our relationships deepened, and I understood my friends a bit more. When common grounds are developed even further between people, you can eventually build a hiking path that leads to the top of their hill, and then you can see things from their point of view.
I truly wish that I could share “tips for developing empathy”, as some way to validate this excursion. Instead, all I can share is my experience and the simple advice of being able to listen.
To this day, I do not believe I’m empathetic. But I believe I will always spare an ear and a hug to a troubled friend.
It may be the weight they carry, the words they speak, or what their body transmits during a hug, but those exchanges of meanings are what allow me to understand and help friends.
As for Brook, well I hope that someday he can feel the warmth of a hug that could send tingling fuzz down his spine. But he has no skin to speak of. Yohoho, skull joke!