Boosting Your Empathy Muscle

Oh … good morning… and welcome. Only a month until Halloween!

I’m talking to myself here today, but you’re most welcome to listen in…

The word I’m hearing in my head is empathy.

Empathy is an elusive killer for me.

I search under the couch pillows for it (score, a nickel!) but can’t always find it.

Empathy is a daily battle against our internal hurricane forces.

Empathy is difficult for most of us. For Trump, empathy is a word that doesn’t even exist. Too bigly maybe.

Empathy is all about understanding. Flushing ignorance. Discovering compassion.

When I feel anger and distrust and suspicion and fear it’s often rooted in my lack of empathy, an inability to put myself in someone else’s shoes.

I see it over and over again in others too.

My Dad used to have a small slice of birch wood etched with the words from a poem titled Walk a Mile in His Moccasins written in 1895 by Mary T. Lathrap  (often attributed to various First Nations tribes):

Pray, don’t find fault with the man that limps,
Or stumbles along the road.
Unless you have worn the moccasins he wears,
Or stumbled beneath the same load.

There may be tears in his soles that hurt
Though hidden away from view.
The burden he bears placed on your back
May cause you to stumble and fall, too.

Here’s an “empathy” example from this week:

It seems really strange to me when I’m helping out at the local soup kitchen and a fellow volunteer (sometimes several volunteers) gets pissed at the downtrodden clients at the serving window.

Stringy hair, missing teeth, stained and torn shirts, bruised eyes and vacant stares. Some better, some worse. All hungry.

Just yesterday a usually lovely, friendly woman chopping carrots next to me turned in snarl and said: … they’d have more success in getting volunteers to help out here if it wasn’t for all of these freeloading fruit pickers.

I cringed, blood filling my ears. Instantly – empathyless – I wanted to yell at her and add sarcastically: … sure, and how about all these drug addicts and homeless people that won’t go out and get a job?

This is a double conundrum.

I’m hearing a lack of empathy for these folks in her anger, her refusal to wear another’s moccasins … plus I have to suppress the bitter distaste I feel towards her for her unkind beliefs and my struggle or refusal to wear her moccasins.

In my head I’m saying to her, why the hell do you come to work here (for free) if you don’t feel that the people coming in should get a free meal? This is a f*%#ing soup kitchen!

Angst comes from a lot of different directions.

It’s hard to see a homeless person in the street. Maybe you  have a relative in the hospital. Or a friend in jail. You’ve watched someone descend into an addiction. You scream and swear in a rage at the a**Hole that just cut you off in traffic.

I often don’t know how to deal with the vitriol in life. Sometimes I’ve been stupid and just avoided these people. That’s my fear speaking.

But no, I tell myself, this lady chopping veggies may have had a rough start to her day and her minor frustrations are boiling over in a weak moment. It happens to us all, right?

Maybe her house had a water heater leak overnight and caused a minor flood. Lots of maybes…

Of course being empathetic doesn’t mean you have to be abused by anyone. There are some people we’re better off leaving to stew in their sour anger and frustration. We can’t save everyone.

But we can take the time to breathe, think, and reflect and look a bit deeper for the reason, the root of someone’s anger, frustration or unhappiness.

Empathy takes time and patience and a positive view that sucks energy like an old 100 watt light-bulb.

Yes, empathy needs an energy generating bootcamp.

Compassion and empathy are muscles. And it’s important to exercise. Empathy bootcamp.

And the best way to change someone’s life is when they really need your help and you have the ability to give it, if only in gracious restraint and a willingness to accept that everyone has their own unique troubles.

Exercising empathy is probably the healthiest muscle to exercise.

Wise idea? Maybe…

I only hope I can listen to my own words going forward…

NB: This blog post is dedicated to the memory of Julia Christine Lane (1986-2019), a beautiful, compassionate, and highly empathetic soul.

 

 

 

If The Shoe Fits…

Shoes

Shoes tell a story.

Old and young … Big and small.

Just think of the renowned 6-word story – flash fiction – attributed to Hemingway…

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Incredible how 6 words can elicit a tear.

This week’s lyrical song inspiration originates in the new running shoes of my 15 month-old grandson.  The little guy has begun to proudly “walk” in the last week or two and sports the coolest orange sneakers.

I’m struck by the juxtaposition of his pumpkin-orange shoes sitting next to my blue New Balance runners.

These pairs of brightly-hued shoes are truly the bookends of life.

Forget 6 words, these shoes speak a thousand, no, a million words.

It reminds me of the bronzed set of baby shoes from my mother’s infancy I have sitting on our living room shelf. A hundred years ago she fiddled and toddled around in these, and today I can hold them in the palm of my hand.

Then I think over my life and of the shoes I’ve owned; the ones I’ve hesitated to discard even though they’re worn down to nothingness.

My Ironman Nikes that I sweat in for many miles and hours in 1990… my ebony wingtip wedding shoes that reflected like dark pools of silky water but were always too tight … the brown velcro’ed sandals I bought in the black market in Beijing.

Shoes are drama and fun.

Shoes are loose and tight… sometimes dreamy and sexy.

Shoes are a warehouse of memory and story.

So, today I give you my song dedicated to our friends… the pedi protectors, the projectors of our personality, our loved and occasionally hated companions through the years… shoes.

Hum this to a musical whimsy in your head…

SHOES

Wake up every morning
you slip them on your feet
they hug your toes all safe and warm
they get you to the street
and even if they smell real bad
at least you’re looking chic

Ev’rybody’s got ’em
right below their pant hem
ya wear them in the am
and oftimes in the pm
by folks who hike earth’s emerald glens
and those who hop like Moonmen

On those frigid Arctic wintry nights
we cheeky guys would snipe
Hey, where’d you get those bland new shoes?
from beer we’re high as kites
We’d sing and dance and schmooze
“is that the cat who chewed your new shoes”

Some are like Imelda
with a thousand pairs or two
a friend who calls them CFM’s
won’t explain that one to you
Cuz sex and sexy don’t heed the word
for them with heels like birds

CHORUS

Manolo what the hell is that?
My style not red as Loubs
I slide them on and still feel jacked
with all this orange and blue
serene’s my colour sure as life
I’m the lucky prince who
holds the hand of my wee man
as we stroll in our new shoes

 

Where Do Your Random Thoughts Lie?

Me at 3:30 am…

The brain/mind is like an involuntary muscle – the heart, the lungs – it doesn’t shut down when we sit down, lay out, sleep.

It merely shifts into another gear (often overdrive) and happily/miserably purrs along without our assistance.

This is a great thing when we need answers or reflection, practice or emotional intelligence… not so fabulous when we need a mental rest from the things that worry and bother us.

And so… Welcome to my Stranger Things mind on this early autumn’ish day.

Sleep used to be a surefire thing, then kids came along, then age crept up … and now it’s a Vegas crap-shoot…. what will I get tonight? Snake Eyes… *WTF*… or… Bingo… Lucky 8!

Yes, the following Sunday morning random thoughts have set up house inside me, coursing like a spring freshet creek through this mind and body that have decided sleep is an over-hyped marketing concept brought to us by Sandoz.

Let’s get started, shall we?

• Is it true that people who drink their coffee black are more likely to exhibit psychopathic traits? Or am I merely rationalizing my smooth, creamy latte with artificial sweetener habit?
• Don’t you hate it when you can’t understand your own language when spoken by someone with a strong accent? I’ve tried watching Derry Girls on Netflix (such a cute show) and struggle to understand 1/4 of the heavily-accented Irish tongue.
• If people make you sick, maybe you should cook them longer. And no exotic spicing combination will ever make the A**holes in our lives taste yummy. Do these comments make you think I’ve had one too many cups of black coffee?
• Why do I pick living worms off the road and throw them back into the grass but step on spiders in my house? And why have we munched down billions of cows and pigs for God-knows how long, but step back in shock and horror at the idea of eating a horse, a dog, or a guinea pig?
• I’ve felt handcuffs on my wrist twice in my life… does this make me a criminal or a sex addict?

• It was totally normal for everyone to get measles when I was a kid, and now it’s a deranged serial-killer lurking everywhere. When will the common cold become Public Enemy #1?
• How has humanity come so far to construct 100+ story skyscrapers that can withstand hurricane and tornado-force winds and yet thousands die in one story huts on small southern islands?
• If we’re so righteous and worried about global warming and overuse of earth’s resources, why do so many people have monster RV’s towing Jeeps behind with a motorcycle attached? Turduckens on wheels!
• Going to sleep each night is like rebooting your computer… you get a fresh reset that starts your program day and then hours later it’s filled with gobbledygook and junk files that need to be trashed.
• Are the secret people on the moon and Mars hiding from us because we’re invading aliens? Do they make Sci-Fi movies about gross-looking Earthlings?
• If I enjoy reading so much, why do I always nod off after 10 minutes of reading a book I really like? Years back, I’d easily read a page-turner in a few days or a week… now it consumes a month or two… or more.
• What god would take away the hair I like on my body and re-sprout it in other weird locations where I just shave it off?
• Is the meaning of life feeling guilty for everything I do, eat and say? A banana is good for my health… but they burned down a forest to grow it, abused children to pick it, and consumed a ton of fossil fuels to ship it to me… *arggggh* … will history judge me harshly for my peanut butter and banana sandwiches?
• I still don’t understand the attraction for women to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon… I try to put myself in feminine shoes to come to grips but I’m clearly not Cinderella, cuz they never fit.
• 1960-1970 went on forevvvvver…. 2010- almost 2020 took 5 hours.
• Donald Trump must be God because he can do or say anything and still he’s omnipotent. All his lesser disciples crumble and tumble to their smelly graves but he is politically immortal. I’m waiting for the first subpoenas, but it seems more and more likely hymns are in the works… “Lying in the Rock of Ages” ?

……………..

• And one final random thought … if there is such a thing as reincarnation, for sure I’ll never be able to come back as Mother Teresa (my lack of religious belief and all)… but maybe I could return as Joan Baez, an angel for the less fortunate, equipped with a great guitar and singing voice. I’d live on as Diamonds and Rust...

The Predator

“The hot blazing sun shone like a flaming ball of fire over the cobalt ocean horizon…”

Yuk… I detest cliches…

Write what you know … that too is a cliche, but one that makes a lot of sense.

I write a great deal from what I know (could it be that I’m too lazy to research what I don’t know?)… and now, as I *gulp* advance in years, from memories stored in my data-bank of experience.

Some of the most formative adventures in my life occurred in the late 1970’s.

I accepted my first hospital lab position and moved to the Northwest Territories in Canada’s Arctic. I had scarcely turned 20, whiskers barely making their presence known on my chin.

There was so much to learn about so many things, jobs, new geographies and climates, and yes, romance and relationships were right near the top of my “need to know more” lineup.

In my late teens in Hamilton, I had dated a bit here and there and lived and cried through one “serious” relationship.

BUT.

All of my life experience to that point was reflected in the western cultural norm of boy chase girl, boy ask girl on date, etc… the formula, the standard pattern of  young women playing coy and hard-to-get was ingrained in me by everything I saw around me in real life and in TV and movies.

And then I moved to Yellowknife (YK).

The rules I knew, my life’s accumulation of dictates, were tossed out the window of the PWA Boeing 737 that carried me from Hamilton to Edmonton and then finally YK.

It was thrilling and it was tumultuous and yes, it was even a bit scary.

All of a sudden, my role as a masculine “gentle predator” was turned on its head and I was as much prey as predator.

Who knew that the fairer sex could have a strong inner urge and bold approach to relations and boudoir activities? One young lady even gifted me a copy of the HITE REPORT. Clitoral …. what????

I won’t go into intimate details here, but all of this backstory leads me to today’s lyric writing.

This song lyric, THE PREDATOR is my little story of being pursued – pretty aggressively – by an attractive young nurse who, for whatever reason, set her sights on me as her sexual prey.

Sure, it was a bit thrilling and stimulating, but in this new world I’d entered, like Alice Through The Looking Glass, it sent a tiny shiver of uneasiness into my core.

So, here goes:

THE PREDATOR – Larry Green

VERSE

Icy YK nighttime
anticipation staggers the line
where mukluks crunch the snow
trembling northern lights that show
the trail of yes opposing no

VERSE

Delicious fever salsa dance
where my reason stands little chance
bestial hormones thrash and fight
my body tingles flight and fright
her instincts master o’er this chill night

VERSE

Seductress graces, sweetly talk
her witchcraft lays a winsome plot
sips of wine poured by Eros
the flame is set, the kindled spark
I’m prey that knows it’s marked

CHORUS

The ghost in my rear view mirror
is a smile and a tear
The cards once dealt were turned
the chase came clear
temptation’s game is rigged
Eden’s curse freshly learned

Good Grief: Are You Shitting Me?

Damn… I’m … We’re … Lucky.

No shit!

Today, in 2019, we don’t die from diabetes (immediately) or childbirth or smallpox as much.

Diphtheria, TB, cholera, syphilis? Not a whole lot.

A whole pile of diseases and conditions to which we had little choice in the matter (Type 2 diabetes aside) don’t typically ravage families and communities they way they once did.

Who gets scurvy anymore? Rickets? Plumber’s butt?

Sure, we’re lucky. But I’m still scared you know. I’m not resting on Easy Street.

There are a million diseases that can ruin our lives today; we have a long list of conditions that continue to stymie our ability to diagnose and treat effectively. Which brings us to….

*drumroll*

Medical scientists and researchers are starting to put other people’s shit inside of us to make us feel better.

Stool transplants.

Dumpster diving in reverse. Shit surrogacy?

The medical community is dressing it all up in formal evening wear by relabelling fecal transplantation as bacteriotherapy or fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT).

What moron thought up this idea? A bunch of pre-med frat boys on an overnight bender? Hey Pete, instead of smoking the hell out of these doobies, why don’t we hook up a tube between our assholes and exchange some real shit?

Nope, it began long before stoned college dudes.

Fecal transplants originated in ancient Chinese medicine more than 1,700 years ago. In those good ole days, this involved drinking a liquid suspension of another person’s feces — umm, no thanks? I’ll stick with chocolate ice cream milkshakes please.

The consumption of “fresh, warm camel feces” has also been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery. Umm… did I mention NO THANKS?

The first use of faecal transplants in western medicine was published in 1958 by a team of surgeons from Colorado, who treated four critically ill people with severe pseudomembranous colitis (before C. difficile was the known cause) using faecal enemas, which resulted in a rapid return to health.

……………..

But why would I want your shit? Isn’t that what sewage treatment plants are for?

According to the Wikipedia gods:

Stool transplant, is the process of transplantation of fecal bacteria from a healthy individual into a recipient; it involves restoration of the colonic microflora by introducing healthy bacterial flora through infusion of stool, e.g. via colonoscopy, enema, orogastric tube or by mouth in the form of a capsule containing freeze-dried material, obtained from a healthy donor.

The effectiveness of stool transplantation has been seen in clinical trials for the treatment of Clostridium difficile (CDI) infection, whose effects can range from diarrhea to pseudomembranous colitis.

Due to an epidemic of Clostridium difficile in North America and Europe, faecal transplant has gained increasing prominence, with some experts calling for it to become first-line therapy for CDI.

In 2013 a randomized, controlled trial of stool transplant from healthy donors showed it to be highly effective in treating recurrent C. difficile in adults, and more effective than vancomycin alone.

Faecal transplant has been used experimentally to treat other gastrointestinal diseases, including colitis, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, and neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s.

In the United States, human feces has been regulated as an experimental drug since 2013.

The authors of a 2016 review suggested that fecal transplants may eventually treat additional conditions such as:

• diabetes
• chronic fatigue syndrome
• fibromyalgia
• obesity
• mood disorders, such as depression
• nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
• hay fever
• arthritis
• asthma
• eczema

Nice … I’m ?happy? … but you can’t just shove someone else’s faeces inside of me and expect me to smile and say thank you very much.

Faecal transplants are NOT on my Flavour of the Month list.

OK, maybe if I transplant the faecal matter of someone handsome and charismatic, it could make a beautiful difference in my life. I could be Tom Cruise or Chris Hemsworth … but no, I don’t want to be a Scientologist or speak with an Australian accent.

I’ll happily take your heart or lungs or kidney (but only if you decide you don’t need them anymore), but keep your own damn poop, OK?

In my lab career, I poked around in thousands and thousands of others’ multi-hued, multi-textured night soil… I could write a fabulous Dr. Seuss book called Oh, The Doo-Doo I’ve Seen. 

I’ve carried my own shit around for … well … a lot of years.

But, if you think – all of a sudden – that I want to carry yours around inside of me for the foreseeable future…

well…

YOU are full of ………….