Empathic Ability, Not Rare Just Necessary

In any activity, whether bungee jumping or singing karaoke at the bar, there is a swift desire to excel. There is an immense opportunity of enlightenment behind screaming your head off as you whisk away your bodily vessel into the great unknown. The rush of completing a task of epic proportions such as these is the reason people continue to do so. There is within us lying dormant, a creeping sensation that life is steeped in endless decay, endless boredom. There is this sense that without the adventure, the cave crawling, the endless summer, there will only be bleak existential ideation at the hope that someone ends it swiftly and with a bang.

What keeps a creator clawing inward is the aware desire of expression. The desperate attempt to excavate what is internal and explore it externally. Most people have devised numerous ways to humor their inner agony and that is partially where we've seen some of humanities greatest treasures take hold. There is no artist, there is no writer, there is no finger painter without a lick of pain. There is however a desire of steeped temptation to be heard, validated, and identified. Sometimes our hobbies can fulfill an archetype out of solace that our social security numbers try to subvert. The goal of this thing called life to a hobby enthusiast is to not have a goal at all. It is to reaffirm that in fact the tree that falls with no one to listen still does make sound. It is to leave a scraggly, jagged imprint on the walls of our caved emotions and it is to become what most people desire above all: free.

When given the prompt of how would my passion be put to economic use, at first I was stumped. I was exponentially looking for an answer that did not seem in reach. How could I, the thing that makes me feel fulfilled, be equitable in a micro-business sense? I just simply did not have the answer.

This is where the real work begins, mind you. The question that is unfulfilled instantly is a question that lights the mind on fire with both a stream of antagonism and curiosity. How could someone like me with a minimum allocated amount of useful sanity come up with a profitable way to prove my abilities are worthy of their salt? It is something that I lit a candle for, something I drove for hours for. It is something I prayed in the dark for. How could my skills, my loves, my ambitions be catered to the mass population? It's just little ol' me with no college degree and a donated bed to sleep on. It was me lost in the labyrinth of my imagination again. This is the thing that artist or writers or table makers have trouble putting into words for people who prefer numbers and deficits. How do I prove the little ability that I have as a major influence of my astute drive whilst impacting someone else? How many times have my written letters been thrown in the trash by accident because someone else was unwilling to look past the plain scrawl? It is with these thoughts that riddled both my nightmares and daydreams as I wondered how to explain my worthy appeal on paper.

What I came up with, as I am sure you are wondering, is something a little un-ordinary. A little less spicy than a pepper enthusiast combining California Reaper and Ghost Pepper hot sauce for an Instagram spotlight. It has no identity outside in the "real" world, and to be honest if you turn your head too fast you will probably neglect to hear it spoken at all. My little hobby, my little exploration into this thing of personal expression and all around glorious activity is both union of self sacrifice and human connection. It is in limited terms, empathy. Yes, I know. Empathy? I can already see the judges eyebrows furrow at the preposterous claim of empathy as a hobby, let alone a profitable one. Hear me out. If one was to look it up in the dictionary it would be described with another word: Pity. Ok, so you see my dilemma? How to make something I'm incredibly skilled and expressive at somehow both applicable in a defined, mapped out sense? I can't tell someone the step by step process of empathy. I can't give anyone samples of how empathy tastes on the lips or how good it will make your thighs look. I can't simply express my kind and gracious nature without a barrage of insults such as "dim-wit" "unfit" or my personal favorite "naïve". I cannot expect anyone with mild neuroticism to take me seriously as "empathy" is not truly very important to most people. It also is invisible so that leads to some confusion. Here I am anyway, drinking a beer and wondering is empathy really my main passion? What happened to me? Where did all my German-Italian athleticism disappear to? Why did I not just follow my father's warning and become a hairstylist or a bartender or something else that society deems accountable?

So you see my predicament is in full bloom. I write best once I get my inner turmoil into a pretty, little vase of self-loathing I call "Edna". She holds my fears, tears, and expletive condemnations. I utilize Edna when I'm running on fumes and want to explode. She keeps me grounded as I can put the many insecurities both founded and unfounded out of arms reach as I try to explain to the world my almost telepathic approach to reaching inside people and healing them. I wouldn't describe myself as a "healer" as I have no real proof of such an awesome and worthy title. It is a more instinctual, intrinsic, trait that I feel has been passed down through my lineage. My mother, someone who I see as my direct line of empathy, was able to make the most crazed, enraged person feel at home. How is it, I wondered, possible to put someone at ease just by looking at them? Some people say it belongs to only those with attractive bodily entities, but I disagree. I have met others like me who bear little resemblance in both anatomy and personality. But there is something that all empaths, healers, telepathic wheelers and dealers know: it is the ability to make the person across from you feel safe, secure, and most importantly, important. It is something that must be done with both integrity, sensibility, and wholehearted attention. It cannot be derived out of selfish intention because that is something else entirely. The art of the con is a much different exercise even whilst using similar techniques. That distinction I picked up on from my mother's other half. This has been passed down to me for both good and bad reasons. Such is life. It is beautiful in a way, as the pain teaches me to see the pain in others, as I have been doing since childhood. It is said somewhere that most people are taught empathy as children or they aren't taught at all. It is incredibly hard to relearn the state of consciousness that requires exploration into the human mind. Especially if it is one's own in question. Narcissism is a huge buzz word for bad person. In reality, no one is a good or bad person, but we all carry certain characteristics that leave deep impressions. Those impressions are what can be characterized as both good or bad or somewhere queasy in the middle.

As I've explained I believe in using empathy as a beautiful hobby. A beautiful, unglamorous, probably unprofitable hobby. It doesn't require a PhD, but it does require drive, moxie, and unmitigated power. Anyone can do it. Anyone can transition the way they see the world from "I hate people" to "people are people". That is empathy, recognizing one's self as the first forbearer of one's own experience. The external is just a platform to jump off of. I'm proposing to use empathy as a business structure, and not just one that uses a cute dog on the logo to prove it donates to charity. I'm talking let's go crazy with the self accountability. I'm talking the boss makes more than the workers do only by the amount of empathy he shows them. I'm talking unions that devise strategy to utilize forgiving and kind nature as incentives for bonuses. I'm talking teaching children the fundamentals of empathy before reading or writing. I'm talking accessing the amount of data that we have as a unified effort to identify and highlight people with huge amounts of empathy. I'm not tired of being empathic, I'm tired of the world explaining that it's not capable of receiving love. I'm tired of watching people explain why they aren't happy when they don't try to learn the core concepts of happiness. Do or do not there is no try. I think Gandhi said that. Just kidding. But yes, I believe in utilizing empathy as a core hiring concept. I want to use empathy to invigorate, elucidate and improvise the already burnt out structure of our modern perfectionism society. It's time that being a good person is not hard as it is so simple. Remembering that no one is good or bad and that we all should strive to just forgive and improve from the limitations that human beings currently struggle with. I want empathy to be a power word. I want people to be less afraid of kindness and more willing to embrace it as a superpower. Those are my dreams for my hobby. Showing the world that no one is special and yet everyone is as long as we recognize and validate the strengths in each other.