Empathy

Attempt six ...

This is simply an impossible post to write!  In each attempt I eventually am forced to reach a point where to give examples brings me too low a level of detail.  No, not to protect me - heavens I can and would tell all about me because I matter not a whit to anyone anymore.

My wholly cerebral pursuit across the past year has been to figure out what does it mean to be human.
Why?
Because I have pretended to be human my entire life and as 2012 was to reveal, something went so terribly sideways on me.  God gave me just a taste of humanity ... but ... it was not humanity I discovered.  Instead, I was to observe across those I trusted, my "friends", business associates, etc, I was nothing more than a joke.
Yeah, maybe that was the lesson I needed to learn, to actually feel inhumanity.

And my confrontational communication expert, gave me a homework assignment last week: to discover the link between empathy and humanity.  Right.  Like telling a blind man to pick out his favorite set of glasses in an optometrist shop ...

So, I Googled empathy and most of the definitions were interwoven with sympathy.

Sympathy is easy.  I can react in "sympathy" to help an injured animal or save baby squirrels from cats.  I can react in "sorrow" for someone in an auto accident, but then I am heavily trained in first aid, from back in  the days before paramedics existed.  Setting broken bones, immobilizing broken bones, dragging bodies, sewing wounds, CPR, etc - done it all and then some.  But, that does not mean I feel a single thing ...

But, empathy is to react out of a feeling or emotion.  Something I am little weak on.

Because I have a friend, I can wholly trust, I am blessed to have been slowly guided across the past year through a range of emotions, many of which I would not have never sought to understand.  But, this is God at work, showing me, molding me, forming the new me to that point that when my friend is now overcome by sorrow, I can understand, for i know sorrow.
And now anger
And jealousy
And joy
And fear
etc ...

Because my friend is human, I am sure there are many, many more emotions reflected that I have not grown to recognize.
But, my growth is still young and I suspect that 2013 is going to be very trying year as God continues to expand my humanity and growth.

So it appears, that if as my communication expert projected - empathy is the very basis of humanity, then internally now I can rest assured that I am human in my nature:  For I can identify with my friend.  With others?  It is a little shaky.  It seems to be very limited so far.  Maybe God is protecting me.

And that makes me suspect that the change within me is complete, wholly in regard to what is required for how God is using me.  So, it is tomorrow I must worry about then.  For if my old nature still exists, well, God help those whomever that nature is intended for!  I no longer have need for any protection, there is nothing left of the old me to protect, much less project.  And though I desire to never be a tool for destruction, I have no choice other than to be as God has created me.  For though I now do understand fear, it is still a foreign emotion.  To that end, I suspect these injures and limitations I have suffered through, will be healed if I am to be or is it just "to be"?