|
Empathy is the erasure of self. Acquiring new perspectives is an impactful experience that provides for a more expanded outlook.
Consistently, through out the day, every day, I ask myself:
"What if I was them?" Be that an old woman sitting in the shade, a man selling fruit, a boy walking home from school, it doesn't matter. I do it without preference. What if my life was theirs? If I was born in this village, if I ate this food, if this was what was expected of me, if these were my friends, if these were my options, where I slept, what I saw, how I saw, what I learned, what I thought, who I was? If this was my mother, my son, my home, my job, my body? If this was how much money I made, how I made it? If this was what I valued, what was of use to me? If this was my history, where I came from, how I lived, my influences and experiences?
By asking such questions, or a question, and practicing this mentally changing mode of though, there is no doubt that I develop a sense of kindred-ness and oneness with people in these places. A lack of separation and distinguishment forms, because I am focusing on core elements of what it is to be human: to care for family, to survive and eat, to enjoy and have pleasure, to feel pain and suffer; to occupy time with an activity.
I make statements like: "everyone's the same," and "everywhere is the same," because from my standpoint it's true. Governments, economies, social systems, and cultural orders may alter the surface, but beyond all that, through and transcending every human is driven by the same desires, and is exposed to the experiences, which cause the same reactions. It is at that level, this layer, that we are all good, inherently and naturally good.
Empathy is to lose myself in exchange for a larger Self. It is the universal perspective of Humanity, as opposed to individual ego. A bigger window and a better picture. It's embracing a stranger as family. Namaste.
When I come to these countries my mission is to feel like I come from these countries. To feel a sense of home, and sameness with the citizens and communities. So much, that when I see other travelers, tourists and foreigners, I see them as foreigners. They are different than my peers and are visiting my country from somewhere else. "This is what I have, who I am, where I come from, and this is you."
In this way I really am not a tourist, or even a traveler, but a simple human, the same as you and them. For these reasons and in these ways I don't take the tours, the treks, the buses, the taxis, the guidebooks, the hotels, the hostels, the sites, the events, the route that is laid out in the Lonely Planet, the highlights and the "don't miss" places. I am sure that the waterfalls and ruins are great, yet wherever I go there I am, and the exterior movement is merely a means to an inner end.
Like this I will walk 3 miles with a sixty-seventy pound load, rather than pay 25 cents for a lift. Not because I don't have a quarter, but because they don't have a quarter. It's to better understand the 60-year-old men and women who carry bags of produce and wood in huge sacks tied to straps hanging from their foreheads. I put myself through pain to empathize with their pain. I am uncomfortable because they are uncomfortable. I deny myself treats and luxuries because they don't even have the option. I make myself like them, and then some. I go hungry because one million/billion people are hungry all over the planet every day. The suffrage I undergo enhances my empathy.
I impose this discipline upon myself to form the character I seek. I seek to shed different characteristics about myself and highlight or expand others. I wish to diminish: greed, lust, hate, selfishness, arrogance, blindness, egocentric actions and thoughts, duality, fear, guilt, shame, judgment, and anger. I wish to promote, or grow more: kindness, love, compassion, respect, humility, intelligence/knowledge, discernment, understanding, oneness, faith, forgiveness, peace, and positivity. I wish to eliminate thoughts and their actions, which are unhealthy/harmful to others and myself. I wish to enhance those thoughts and their actions, which are healthy/helpful to others and myself.
I stop equating pesos, bat, kip, dong, whatever, into American dollars. I stop comparing prices to America because I am not American, and I can't go there. I get paid 2 dollars a day and can only spend one of that on myself; the rest goes to my children. I deliberately put myself under conditions of extreme poverty for the wealth of the experience. I deny myself basic and material needs for the intangible fruits I reap afterwards. I get dirty to clean my insides, I go hungry to fill my mind, and I let myself be ugly to make my soul beautiful.
|
