Open Writing

I once read a story about a woman who was described as an empathist. She had gone to live in a remote place with her dogs and a few hens, far removed from her fellow human beings and their unresolved emotional problems. She survived with a vegetable patch and an occasional foray into the nearest town. In the life she had left behind she had felt real and desperate pain, absorbing the inner turmoil of other people.

The dictionary makes ‘empathy’ a synonym of ‘sympathy’, but that is not so, is it?

‘Sympathy’ is the “sharing of another’s emotions, especially sorrow or anguish”. ‘Empathy’, on the other hand, is “the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings”.

Perhaps the definition should also make it clear that not everyone would willingly choose to have this power, unless there is already a close and intimate relationship.

The Wise Ones tell us to protect ourselves, close up the chakras, make sure the lotus flowers are tight-petalled, and put in position the shining gold band so that our energies cannot all be drained away by the needs of another. It is a necessary, life-saving thing: we all know what it feels like to be sucked dry.

“Too late,” we say. “Too late. I forgot to protect myself.” And the other one smiles and looks stronger, and is better prepared for battle.

Some weeks ago we had a new ‘Big Issue’ seller in my town. We have had a young man for some time, pleasant, not pushy, and he had a nice smile and stood in a good place between the bookshop and a bakery. You could see a lot of people stopping to chat and they almost always bought the magazine. The Post Office is at the back of the bookshop - yes, it seems a strange idea but it works well - and people would say, “I’ll be out in a minute when I’ve got some change”. And if you stood for a moment or two and watched you’d see them come out and go back to the young man. Sometimes you’d hear the shout “Big Issue”, echoing up the street, but it was a reasonable, musical sound with just the right intonation, as if he was calling out “I’m here, don’t forget me.”

When I first saw the girl selling the ‘Big Issue’ I couldn’t imagine how it could have been allowed, for there isn’t really room for two in this town. She wasn’t very old, just a girl with a headscarf and a bag of magazines. East European, perhaps, a stranger standing on a corner against a tide of strangers rushing by. People staring, people thinking “where’s that one come from?” Her survival depended on emptying her bag and ending the day with no more to sell.

The first time I stopped to buy one I realised that she knew no English. I asked her where she came from, but there was only a blank stare. Perhaps she saw sympathy on my face for she said ‘coffee’ and pointed to the supermarket entrance ten yards away. I went into the Costa coffee bar and queued for a takeaway cappuccino. I thought she might be hungry so I took a flapjack as well. Alas, one sip of the coffee produced a grimace and the flapjack was dropped unopened into the bottom of the ‘Big Issue’ bag. As you might expect my instinctive reaction was a flash of anger because my gesture was so rudely dismissed but I didn’t show it. Pointless to say “Oh, I’m sorry you didn’t like it.” I wished I could have spoken to her. How cruel to put her on the street with no English, I thought, and even worse, with no awareness of how to say the three words she did know.

“Listen,” I wanted to say, my years of teaching English thrusting upwards. “This is how you say it. Don’t let your voice slide downhill like that. Listen to me, say it like this. Copy the way I say it.”

And I would have just the right intonation, cheerful, hopeful, first a rising then a falling note. I would look into her face and say, “again, say it again”, until it was a positive and cheerful phrase:

Smile. “Big Issue - please!”

Weeks have now passed. I turn my car into the supermarket car park and look across the lines of people carriers to see if the little shawled head is still there. I see it is. She seems to have decided it’s every day or nothing. Perhaps the public have reached saturation point and don’t like having to decline an already rolled up ’Big Issue’, about to be thrust into a passing shopping bag. We hate being held to ransom. Real market traders know that if they play the game in the wrong way their customers will not take the bait.

I leave my car and approach slowly. I watch people walk quickly by and wave a polite ‘no thank you’ at her. I watch people treat her as being invisible. I watch people stop to try and have a conversation. There’s no getting out of buying if they do that. Oh yes, I do it myself sometimes, now that I’ve got over the pique of having my coffee and flapjack rejected. I know she hasn’t got the hang of decimal currency yet: it’s best to have some lose change if you decide to stop. I wish someone would teach her how to have a proper smile. But why has no-one told her that we like to hear ‘thank you’? I haven’t heard it, not once.

I’ve decided not to buy today, not even from the pleasant young man outside the bookshop. What has all this to do with empathy and sympathy, you say? I don’t have a pat answer to that. Sympathy, yes, for both the young man and the girl, for it must be a struggle for both of them. Empathy, no. They are managing fairly well, surviving in their own very public goldfish bowls. I don’t find myself having to - “understand and imaginatively enter into another person’s feelings”

Not this time, anyway.