Thinking For Yourself

...Fact to the matter. Empathy and Sympathy get bad raps. I like to think the reason empathy and sympathy are spelled differently and thus two separate words is because they are as polar opposites as night and day, the sun and the moon.

Sympathizing with an individual or a cause is to feel sorry for a given person or situation. We give our condolences, weep, cry, feel sad and mourn when we sympathize. “Oh, that’s too bad that happened.” Or, “here, please take my shoes.” Or, “oh, heck, just take my feet!”

But imagine the sympathizee (my word), instead of taking these trifling tchotchkes, taking this load off their back …and hanging it on the sympathizer’s shoulders? …and skipping on off loddy-doddy!?!

Now, there is the sympathizer, with this heavy burden draped over their shoulders climbing a mountain, maybe not eating for a week or two, having to come up with ways to fight the wind and stay clung to this wall that don’t want to be held. The decisions and choices made during this excursion is where empathy resides. That hard pressed space where, clawed to a wall that has no use for sympathy, suddenly realizing sympathy gives not a flem, flam, fleck less about woulda, coulda, shoulda either, and more about what have I got myself into!?! And what am I gonna do about it!?!

I’m just about finished reading ‘What Have We Here?’ by Billy Dee Williams. I love the book …so gracious and sedate… but my goodness, I don’t think there is anyone who Billy has met, shaken hands with, kissed, loved, disagreed with, saw across the street, NOT mentioned in his memoir. The appeal he brought to Hollywood and Broadway, no doubt was not naught for naught. I’m guessing I might be a little while longer walking a mile in his shoes…

#ThinkingForYourself #IReadMemoirs #HappyReading #StillWriting #JustBlogged