Wayne Northey: A man in our Home Improvement Group once challenged us all: “Just try spending one day in my skin!” In 1959, a white Texan journalist, John Howard Griffin, did precisely that: for 420 days.
The 1961 book Black Like Me and the 1964 film of the same title tell the story.
We have close relatives in our family who spend all their days in such skins.
I have other close relatives who dismiss any such sensitivity as so-much-liberal/progressive-self-flagellating-unfounded-such-is-life-nonsense. . . Sigh. . .
They could benefit from joining our Home Improvement Group. In it, we challenge men to discover or turn up the dial on empathy and compassion. The former is of Greek etymology, meaning “in suffering (with).” The latter is from the Latin: “suffering with.” How their English use is distinguished in our presentation: one is passive; the other takes action. The former sees the pain of another; the latter moves if possible to alleviate it. Both have their legitimate place.
If you want to help others be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.—Dalai Lama
Bluntly: to go through life lacking empathy and not showing compassion misses out on the peace, the joy, the freedom, the sheer abundant life1–and indeed at times the pain!–of what it means to be fully/fulfilled/full-throttle human. In short, one lives a stunted human existence.
For a grand portrait of what abundant life looks like in one instance, see: Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine, by noted Canadian poets Susan McCaslin and J S Porter.
That Adam Toledo was at the age of 13 denied discovering such a life through yet another wanton act of murderous police brutality is utterly execrable.
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