Come Feel With Me

"I don't really want to watch any more of this," he said.  I agreed, so after only five minutes or so of the second episode of a streamed series Netflix had suggested to us we switched instead to a recorded episode of Big Bang Theory.  Ah, the joys of TiVo!

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept puzzling over this little episode. My husband's full comment had been, "I don't really want to watch any more of this--it's coarse." I agreed that I didn't really want to watch any more, but "it's coarse" didn't seem to fit quite right for me. It felt a little off, a little imprecise.

I've known more or less forever that my tastes in leisure/relaxation/entertainment experiences don't quite track with the cultural mainstream. I suspect that people have sometimes thought of me as a bit of a prude or a goody-goody, and I've always been a bit irritated by that, because it doesn't really fit my inner experience. But I've never been able to articulate exactly why it doesn't feel like a fit.

And then, some time after that little experience of switching from Netflix to Big Bang, a word popped into my head: empathy! Yes! That's the common thread: I strongly prefer books, movies, TV shows, activities that stretch and exercise and strengthen my empathy muscles.

They don't have to be deadly serious. They don't have to track perfectly with my personal value system. But they do have to engage, and ideally expand, my capacity for empathy.

I like things that give me an empathy workout. I feel good, in a way directly analogous to the "good tired" one feels after a physical workout, when I've had an empathy workout.

So I thoroughly enjoy Big Bang Theory, with its ongoing themes of the pain of feeling like the odd one out and the goodness and healing power of friendship.  I love Huckleberry Finn and Jane Austen and One Hundred Years of Solitude, so different in tone and setting, but so alike in keen and ultimately loving insight into human relationships.

Empathy workouts don't have to center only on human-with-human relationships. It can encompass human relationships with the rest of the natural world as well. For an experience of pure awe and delight, watch My Life As a Turkey.

And I could not fail to mention that most magnificent, many-layered empathy workout, To Kill A Mockingbird (both book and movie).

Foyle's War, Modern Family, Schindler's List, Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti detective novels--I'm sure you could name more.

I'm a sucker for history museums and archeological sites, places where I can feel a connection to lives lived long ago.

At a Tavern Dinner, recreating an 1840's tavern experience,

at Dayton's Carillon Historical Park.

 

I love art museums, where entering into an artist's perception of reality can expand my own, and especially public art, where that can become a shared experience building a sense of community.

 

What I don't like, and even fear, are experiences offered as entertainment that in fact serve to numb or deaden our capacity for empathy. It's not coarseness, exactly, but callousness that repels me.  I also dislike and fear addictive numbing-out presented as recreation, whether it takes the form of violent video games, gambling, substance misuse and abuse, or objectified sex.

 

What I value and seek is that empathetic feeling-into experience, whether somber (the D.C. Holocaust Museum, Of Gods and Men) or light-hearted (Strictly Ballroom, The Princess Bride).

 

Empathy, connection, community, fellow-feeling--call it what you will. This is what refreshes me, re-creates me. And I think it's not just me, it's our whole hyper-polarized world that could use a little more of it.