I’ll just get right to it.
The accusation that speaking out and showing empathy to one is somehow a denial of the pain of another shows just how severely limited our thinking surrounding the topic of empathy is – how stifled our imaginations for collective liberation and peace truly are.
We routinely and consistently perform selective empathy, treating it, as we do most things in our capitalistic culture, as a scarce resource that needs to be hoarded, rather than what it is: abundant and generative.
We treat empathy as a commodity, and because we do this, we all lose.
Until we allow one another the grace to be able to express our outrage, sorrow, empathy, and fear when we come to it, and until we are allowed to do it imperfectly, we will not make any collective progress. Rather, we will be stuck, as we are now – sitting idly by in our comfort and silence as all we do not say turns to ash in our mouths and we begin to choke on our very humanity.
We shouldn’t need buckets of courage to speak truth to power – to speak our compassion – to say our hurt – to show solidarity with those who are suffering – to be imperfect and to try – and yet we do – because of what we do to one another in the process.
There is enough sorrow in this world.
We don’t need to add to it.