Empathy Demands of Us: The barefooted children by the puddle side shriek in agony when somebody steps into the measly drizzle of chutney on their paper plate, yet the stepper pays no heed. He neither stops nor glances at them because for him, it is an everyday nuance. For him, of all people, ironically enough, it is a nuisance having to set eyes upon the children. To him and all those around him, the children are a burden, and not the other way around, even though he crumpled the (possibly) only thing which they might have to eat today. ‘They shall beg again; do not fret about them’’, claim the self-proclaimed important and busy, without even realising for a split second that the child whom they are showing no mercy to could very well have been, by a cruel twist of fate, oon their own.
The Burden of Conscience:
Empathy is often imagined as a companion; when the rest of the world marches on, she lingers. She finds the child’s cry akin to that of her younger brother’s, seeks familiarity in the characteristic nose on the face, and concludes that the way the child whimpers is one in which every other child does, yet the cacophony and clutter of all that around deafens the people, wrapping their ears in a thick, agglutinated blanket of partial deafness, through which transcend only the cries of the near and beloved. ‘How can they have nothing, and I have everything?’ The thought haunts her. How did the structure of society crumble to this point of deterioration that two kids howl but for entirely different reasons — one, because the cook did not put cheese on her Spanish omelette, and the other, because a teenage beggar snatched the sole piece of bread which she had managed to get her hands on after an entire day’s worth of struggle?
The Hand That Forbids Empathy
She is forbidden from bending down and enquiring about the frail child lying in his sister’s equally frail arms; her arm is pulled back when she tries to give them money, she is warned about the children being part of a gang, and she is forced ahead. Still, she wonders what fault it is of the child for being born into ruthless circumstances. She struggles to exhale under the excruciating weight of her guilt, holding herself responsible for this. At the same time, boys sitting behind the children feast on plate after plate of snacks, counting the currency in their hands. She sees a young girl being bullied for her bob cut and eating lunch all by herself, but she cannot approach the girl, knowing that her descent will frighten the girl and cause her to run away. She cannot, and that ‘not’ consumes her from within her core.
Fate and Inequality
They say that the beauty of life is its unfairness to every single being, but how can the life of a man in a wheelchair by the slums staring longingly at passersby be equitable with that of a physically able man living on his own terms and conditions in a concrete home, independent of help from others? Nobody gets everything, but some indubitably get more than others, and those free of a conscience are relieved from this realisation, or rather, relish it with complacency. When I have all, why shall I complain about my neighbour not having enough or give him any of mine? I earned it from the job he could’ve landed if he hadn’t been stuck in traffic that day! It is not us or any quality of ours. These are all the strings of fate; some are long, some are short, but none are equal.
The Limits and Necessity of Empathy
Grief and pain are entirely personal and restricted to one’s own self; no one else can experience what another person is experiencing. Amidst the ever-increasing gap in the levels of difficulty of life’s tests, the most human emotion to emerge is empathy. To empathise is to sew oneself into another’s shroud, to visualise the cuts on their feet when they wear angled shoes, to have a perception of the rush of adrenaline a fellow next to them may feel when they see a panic induction, and to imagine how their chest constricts and collapses when someone calls out their name in a sharp tone. The one who disagrees with his parents cannot imagine what an orphan feels, but what he can do is refrain from mentioning them in front of him. It is best to swallow the keys to the boxes of knowledge that create a void in others, for ignorance is a bigger bliss than one may envision.