The Magic of Writing in Evoking Audience Empathy and Changing Perspectives

My journey in balancing my understanding of empathy

I’ve been thinking about empathy often, lately.

Yet, I’ve been thinking about empathy, a positive concept, through the lens of a negative perspective. That is, I think about how important empathy is, often to describe how simply understanding someone else’s perspective, it could help alleviate someone else’s pain.

For example, if we all had more empathy for chronic pain and how it manifests differently for each person, for each day, maybe we wouldn’t have such a static view of productivity and worth. Maybe we would stop creating this world of shame for those who might not be able to churn out work in exchange for money, which is the way we’ve constructed our world.

It’s still a positive train of thought that would net positive outcomes if we as a society learned how to shift our understanding. Yet, I’m noticing how the focus is on “removal of the bad stuff,” instead of empathy so that through another’s eyes, I could see the world anew.

With the magic of writing, others have led me to build on this empathy muscle and be able to experience something from an entirely new perspective. Instead of empathy as avoidance or change of outcomes, this is the empathy that lets me see the beauty in something I hadn’t before.

This Body Doesn’t Seem To Have Been Made For Nature

I’m well known for how much I do not mesh well with nature.

In the spring, my body’s immune system has one purpose and one purpose only. The one destined goal of this immune system is to itch, to sneeze, and to drool snot from the nostrils as a way to “fight” innocent allergens. It does a great job at a completely unnecessary job. To that, I can deeply relate, as I reorganize my condiments by colour instead of doing my meal prep of the week. This is my immune system, after all.

In the summer, once it rises above precisely 26.5C (79.7F), my body suffers. In the winter, as temperatures dip below -10C (14F), the air hurts my face. And the beautiful Autumn? The ambient air smells like someone has shoved me into a compost bin.

I’m an indoor cat, an indoor plant, safe to say.

Yet, Through the Magic of Words, I was Entranced

“Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow’s edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.” — (Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)

It’s through the magic of words craftily sewn together in the voice of a writer that we get to experience something as if we are them. While I would normally not be found on a sunny day, outdoors, because sunny days are the worst for allergies for me, this quote itself piqued my interest — what if?

What if I stepped outside and embodied these words? What if I stepped outside, and instead of all of these worries that come to mind (“oh how uncomfortable it would be to sneeze again”, “how embarrassing it would be to get post-nasal drip and cough during a pandemic”) I focussed on what could feel good?

What if I could be the one shimmering at the meadow’s edge, doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun? It sounds like a better life than vacuuming my floor, which is the next task on my list.

A Book is Best Enjoyed as a Conversation

It seems counterintuitive that a book is enjoyed as a conversation. We seldom get to reach out to the author with our thoughts. Even if we are able to do so, not many authors have the time to return every email or letter.

Yet, the book represents a kind of avatar that coaxes and encourages. Someone did write these words, and though edited through careful selection, their essence is there to guide us as readers to try on a new perspective.

With each new idea presented, I find myself standing in front of racks and racks of thrift-able clothing, each waiting for me to find the gem in them. Some will be silly, like an orange shirt with a polar bear on it, and I would laugh it off, as I cannot wear that to work. Some books will present ideas that are tried and true and discarded in the past era of your life, like a productivity book that asks me, a seasoned productivity-tip-try-er, “to make a to-do list”.

Yet sometimes you find a gem so appealing presented that even if it doesn’t usually fit into your closet of ideas, you try it on. You begin to love it. You begin to wonder how your closet can be filled with other things like that.

Bonus: you text a close-friend 23 messages about why you highly recommend this book because you are close enough to send 23 messages to someone without it being seen as spam.

I can’t put my finger on it, but every writer that has captured my attention and changed my life in some way had their own way of going about things. Some, like Malcolm Gladwell, simply write as they speak; as an avid podcast listener, getting to listen to his podcast and then read his book is an incredible experience because he sounds the same across both. (I should not be shocked). Robin Wall Kimmerer integrates her Potawatomi culture, amongst other Indigenous stories, alongside how these motivated her curiosity into further scientific investigation.

It’s the way words can be used so you can imagine yourself knowing this aspect of the author a bit more through their words, enough for you to begin wondering what it would be like if you embodied the same values and ideas.

Empathy: Double-Edged Sword

Although empathy is crucial in our day-to-day interactions with other humans and to build a community where we give as much as we take, having empathy can be exhausting. It’s especially exhausting when we now have access to a billion thoughts at our fingertips, far more than our brains ever evolved to process at a given time. Worsened by algorithmic amplification of strong, negative emotions, the magic of empathy sometimes becomes the weight of empathy, as you wade through the heaviness of loud, extreme opinions.

After reading this book, I have decided to make deliberate space for empathy for positive things. I want to understand and experience why another writer has become passionate, or how they see beauty in what I deem as unpleasant.

Will you come and join me? And if so, how?