Radical Empathy

Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you I’m always in a hurry.

I’m always doing something. I keep busy. When I look back on my childhood, the most incredible thing to me is realizing that I used to actually get bored. Since college, it’s felt like my life has been constantly moving from one thing to the next. Whenever I’m walking or driving somewhere, I’m running through a mental checklist in my mind. My constant refrain is, “What’s next?”

Rushing through life is a great way to get stuff done, but it produces a disconnect. You start viewing those around you as obstacles. For years, whenever I’ve found myself walking behind someone much slower, particularly at the grocery store, I’ve had this little internal litany:

I get that you’re in no hurry. I’m happy for you, really. But try to remember that some of us have things to do and places to be.

Late last summer, I was at Kroger and once again found myself behind someone who didn’t seem to be in any rush to get anywhere. I was; I had stuff to do, dinner to cook, a family to feed. The guy walking down the aisle in front of me was tall, and clearly much older than I was. It’s always older folks, right? Moseying down the aisles of the world’s supermarkets, staring intently at rows of virtually identical labels like they’ve never seen food before.

At first I was irritated, as usual. But as I stared at the man’s back, trying to will him to move faster, something strange happened…

I started to wonder why he was walking so slowly.

I live in a nice suburb where pretty much everyone has paired off. Seldom do you see someone (particularly a man) alone at the grocery store. So where was his wife? Where were his children? He was an older gentleman. What if he was alone? Not just in the supermarket, but in his life?

As I watched him walk, a story formed in my mind. A man who’s reached the point where life has taken more than it gives. His wife is gone, the kids all grown up and moved away. They talk to him, but not as often as he’d like. He misses his grandchildren. And every time he goes to the store, he’s reminded that he has to do everything by himself, for himself.

I actually started to tear up. Part of me wanted to stop him and ask how he was doing. Part of me wanted to just hug him. Of course I didn’t intrude. But it all underscored how writing diligently has changed my life, and my perspective.

I’d felt a rush of empathy.

Feeling Your Way

Interiority is the key to modern writing. There’s little value in being able to carefully describe a scene in modern literature. If that’s what someone wants, they can just watch a movie. But if someone is reading a book, they expect more. They want to get behind the character’s eyes. They don’t just want to see each scene; they want to feel it through the characters.

To craft good interiority, you have to be able to see your characters as people, with not only their strengths but also their flaws. That requires a desire to understand how others think and feel. And that is empathy.

As such, I often refer to modern writing as an exercise in radical empathy. You have to be able to empathize with all your characters. You need to understand why the good guys won’t always win. Why they’ll make mistakes, but still have the best of intentions. You need to understand why the bad guys don’t see themselves as the bad guys. Why they feel they don’t have a choice, and why that makes them pitiable characters.

Empathy is perhaps the most critical skill of any modern writer. I often say that anyone can write, but really that’s an oversimplification. Because to write a truly compelling story, you need to be capable of empathy. You have to be able to feel your way through the world. A really good writer is deeply attuned to those around them.

I’ll admit, it makes things harder sometimes. I doubt I’ve cried as much through my entire adult life as I have over the past year and a half. I worry more about what could happen to my kids when they’re not right there with me. I even worry about my cat getting hurt (orange tabbies are known for being fearless). But to be fair, most of those tears have been from sheer joy.

Writing, and the empathy that comes with it, has brightened the colors of my world. It’s made me slow down more often. Be present with my family. Look up at the sky. Watch squirrels and birds in my yard more intently than I did even when I was a child, and the whole world was new and utterly fascinating.

To be a writer is to feel. It can be painful to feel too much in our world today. But it has its moments. – MK