Increasing Empathy

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Last Friday night I was waxing a wee bit existential and reading a book called: The Book of The World: A Contemporary Scripture. It is a weird and wild book, comprised entirely of quotes with an unknown author/origin. It was suitable for a stormy night, and as I read page after page of hashed together quotes I wrote in a margin: “everyone you meet is a version of yourself you didn’t know existed.” Because I was waxing existential, I thought I’d stumbled upon a bit of rare profundity, but the next morning I was saddened by the simplicity of my revelation.

Everyone you meet is a version of yourself you didn’t know existed.

Doesn’t that just make you want to be kinder?

What I think I was thinking was this: it’s not that un-understandable how humans behave. People have done some pretty fucked up shit, like the Golden State Killer or any number of sundry, vaguely famous murderers. Name a disturbing, heinous thing, and chances are, someone somewhere has done that thing. I’m not condoning crime, I’m simply saying that criminals are still people. They are mostly like you and me, they might just be a bit unhinged. Or, they may have experienced trauma themselves and instead of healing said trauma, passed it on to their kids. Or, they make have been born and raised in a crime-ridden neighborhood or…