What if Irony is Judging Others for Lacking Empathy?
“Can you hear the time?”
asked the art teacher.
“What??”
he responded,
bewildered.
“The time.
Can you hear it?”
she asked again.
“What the hell
are you talking about?!”
he asked,
now annoyed.
“…”
she paused.
“Can you tell me what time it is
without looking at your watch.”
she eventually spoke again.
“No.
I can’t.”
he replied,
indignantly.
“Just a few moments ago,
the church bell rang
to indicate noon.
If you want to make art,
I want you to learn
to be present enough
to hear that.”
she replied.
If responsibility
is response + ability —
as in our ability to respond
to a given situation —
then
it is only human
that when we experience too much tension,
our responsibility
gets hampered,
the range of our responsibility
gets diminished.
Others
may wish to hold us accountable
or our own sense of duty and obligation
may haunt us,
but neither
helps us recover
our hampered
responsibility
or restore
our range
of responsibility.
To take responsibility
back,
our tension
has to be released.
You didn’t create
unless the form of the output
was unexpected.
If it was,
then you were manufacturing.
Nothing wrong with either,
but it can be frustrating
if you enter the manufacturing process,
with the desire to create
or if you enter the creative process,
with the desire to manufacture.
It’s easy to acknowledge luck
when its credit
is not tied
to our self-worth.
It’s hard to acknowledge luck
when its credit
is tied
to our self-worth.
When someone gives us
an apology
we need to receive,
the load of a burden we’ve been carrying
becomes shared
with the person
who gave
the apology.
When someone accepts
our apology
we need accepted,
the load of a burden we’ve been carrying
becomes shared
with the person
who accepted
the apology.
To find out
with whom
or what
you’re hyper-empathizing,
notice how you react
when things
or people
other than your “self”
are threatened.
If your goal
is to lift weights,
you can achieve that goal
by lifting weights.
But for your muscles to develop
you must put the weights down
and help your muscles
recover.
Without recovery
you may achieve,
achieve,
and achieve
with minimal development
while promoting fatigue
and injury.
What if
our psychology
and our relationships
were like muscles?
Happiness
is something
we already have.
If we don’t feel it
it’s because we only feel it
when we see it
with appreciation.
We often learn this
after
we’ve lost it.
As we all of a sudden
remember
having seen it
without appreciation.
All the while,
appreciating it now
since we have lost it.
When a decision
leads to something
“bad,”
we call it
“wrong.”
Until the same decision
leads to something
“good.”
Then
we call it
the “best.”
To notice our greed
…
we can make
a strict promise
on exactly when it is
we will feel like
it’s enough,
then watch ourselves
break
that promise.