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Feeling Freedom

Freedom is the ability to empathize

By Vivian R McInernyPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 3 min read
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Feeling Freedom
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

As a child, I thought freedom meant the right to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I couldn’t wait until I turned eighteen. That was the age of autonomy when I could legally say, “You’re not the boss of me!”

Now on the precipice of old age, I’ve come to believe freedom is not only the ability to act in my own interests but also the desire to act in the interest of others.

Freedom is compassion.

It sounds too simple to be meaningful, like the words on a sappy greeting card or annoying bumper sticker.

But our ability to understand the feelings of others may be our most powerful tool for cultivating freedom.

If I want to be free from impatience, I aim to empathize with the one who is getting on my nerves.

If I want to be free from hatred, then I must learn to feel compassion for those who hate.

Empathizing with someone is not the same as agreeing with them. Compassion doesn’t require that I understand the other’s opinion. It’s not even necessary that I discover how that person came to their particular opinions or behaviors because I am not a psychoanalyst and the person is not on the couch.

In fact, they are more often screaming in my Face(book.)

Empathizing with them is, to me, a matter of bearing witness to our shared moment.

Yep, that sounds like some cuckoo woo-woo talk.

It’s like the 1960s’ Be Here Now without the psychedelics.

But maybe it’s what elders have always done. The wise ones, anyway. No doubt there are plenty of us focused on aches and pains, or golf.

If I've learned anything in recent years, it is that cultivating empathy takes practice.

Neuroscientists have studied what happens when we witness and empathize with the pain of others. Electrical activity in certain regions of the brain increases. In scans, the prefrontal cortex lights up.

I like to think it looks like opening night for a smash hit on Broadway.

At least, it does in mentally healthy people. Neuroscientists note that the brains of psychopaths do not light up when shown images of people suffering because they do not feel empathy.

Empathy is a complex emotion that develops slowly. A newborn baby instinctively feels fear. A sudden loud noise will startle and scare them. A few weeks later, they may laugh at an adult making a funny face. But it may take a couple years for them to learn empathy.

A two year old needs to be told that pushing another child to grab a toy causes the other child emotional, if not physical, pain. Eventually, the child learns to share or take turns, not simply to avoid being scolded or punished by adults but because they can relate to how other children feel.

That is empathy.

Aggressors in war and crime feel no empathy.

They must view their victims as beneath them, as less-than, vermin deserving of the horrors inflicted upon them.

It’s a way evildoers can justify their offensive actions so they can live with themselves.

That’s why authoritarian regimes work so hard to control the press. They need to censor information and shape the narrative to control who empathizes with whom and for what reasons.

But now we are all journalists of sorts, documentarians of our ordinary lives, and it’s not possible to control everyone.

It’s heartbreaking to scroll through the social media accounts of young Ukrainians, one week posing for smiling selfies with friends, the next wandering through the rubble of their bombed-out city streets. Or, worse, the abrupt silence.

Imagine reading Anne Frank’s diary while WWII raged.

How can we not empathize?

We’ve seen evidence that many Russians feel the same way.

Some brave souls dared to protest a war started by their own country, risking their lives for the lives of others. They are heroic. More Russians likely disagree with their county’s aggression but, for a myriad of reasons, feel powerless to stop it.

Of course, some — too many — believe what they’ve been told and/or are willing to carry out their leader’s commands.

If they could see what we see, would they feel what we feel?

In my most optimistic moments, I hope mass communication, and more specifically, personal essays and social media records of ordinary people can make us all more empathetic.

And when we feel compassion for our fellow humans, we have no desire to do them harm.

And that is true freedom.

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About the Creator

Vivian R McInerny

A former daily newspaper journalist, now an independent writer of essays & fiction published in several lit anthologies. The Whole Hole Story children's book was published by Versify Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. More are forthcoming.

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