Empathy

Now this is a tender subject.  Empathy.  Before you start dredging up images of Diana Troi on ST:TNG (oops, my geek roots are showing again...), this is not a piece on the Hollywood or Fiction special-effects and bad acting on the subject of Empathy... this is, at least in my mind....real.

Is empathy, the ability of a person to feel the emotional state of another, real?  I believe it is.  I think we all have this ability to greater or lesser degrees.  I can't think of one single person who doesn't feel their heart twist at a sappy love story or a piece of beautifully written and performed music.  These things are, to a lesser degree, touches of empathy.  They are feeling what the performer is putting into the piece, what the writer tried to invoke when crafting the piece.  It's an appreciation of creativity.. and very much a touch of empathy - to have a feeling invoked in you by another... it's hardwired into our brain circuitry.

So everyone, to this slight degree, has empathy.  Not quite so scary when you put it in commonly used applications and everyday settings, is it?

Now, I'm going to explore a bit further, move into the stronger empathic gifts.  Just as some people are gifted with strength, with charisma, with creativity, there are people among us who have this special sense of empathy in adverse proportion to the strength found within the general population.  Now, whether they've worked to develop it, or its a natural gift is up for debate and speculation, but these people DO exist.  Most simply don't announce it, as, well, let's face it, there's ridicule and the racial memory of which hunts to keep such blatant announcements in check.

Nobody wants to be thought of as unnatural or different - that's another thing that's hardwired into the human brain.

My personal gift (or curse, as I've called it both) of empathy is stronger than most.  (Did ya hear that...I'm coming out of the empathic closet)  It's primarily tied into my writing..and is mainly projective in nature, but does go into receptive as well.... I'll explain.

Part of the reason I write (aside from the obvious one...that I like it) has always been a way to clean the cluttered pathways of my mind.  As I'm cleaning, I'm also imprinting my emotional state into the work... projecting it through the written word.  Some of my best pieces were created when I was in a state of turbulent emotional upheaval.

Because I'm so in tune with the written word, I can, and do, actively read others in what they've written, as well...reading below the 'surface' of the words, so to speak, even when the person doing the writing isn't (or can't) actively project themselves into the work.  There's a texture and an underlayment to all words that I can always pick up on.  The written word speaks very powerfully both through me and to me - yet another reason why I'm a hobby writer, and why I'm so very comfortable with online communications, as well.

Other forms of communication - spoken, sung, artistically created sculptures or paintings or drawings...those I'm not so good at, although I do have crystalline moments of clarity when the originator is actively projecting themselves onto the work.

It is difficult to hit the 'post' button at this point - the bare words simply don't have the punch, the fire, the fervor I'm used to seeing in my written works, proof positive of my hesitation to well and truly come 'out.'  That hesitation, I'm sure, will be felt in the words I'm writing here.

Aaaaaaand........*gritting teeth*  post.