Through Lattice Windows: Getting Real About Radical Change
Columnist Leanne Hunt says that, after damning herself as someone who could not feel, not understand and not even care, she seems to have developed an unexpected capacity for empathy
I seemed to have developed an unexpected capacity for empathy.
I recently reconnected with a friend from university whom I haven't seen for twenty-five years. It was a shock to hear that he had been in a motorbike accident and been paralysed from the neck down. From being an athletic, independent person, he is now confined to a wheelchair and needs a full-time carer.
A couple of years ago, I would have found it difficult to write about a tragedy like this. I would have felt afraid of saying the wrong thing; of sounding insensitive or of assuming too much. But I no longer feel that way. It is not because I too am disabled; I was already clinically blind when I left school. The thing that has changed for me is the ability to empathise.
Empathy doesn't come with knowing a person well. It doesn't come with understanding the mechanics of his situation. It doesn't even come with spending time around people with his particular affliction. It comes with going deep inside yourself and discovering your basic, one-sided nature and longing for wholeness.
There was a time when I admired people who could empathise with the sick and hurting. I even pictured myself in ministry to the outcasts of this world. However, I had more or less disqualified myself from ever being among the caring sector of society, simply because I was so tangled up in my own anger, self-reproach and disappointment. I even gave up my dream of helping others. I just threw it away, convinced that I must have deluded myself that I could ever give support to anyone, let alone disabled people.
The plunge into dark despair took me to many unfamiliar places in my mind. They weren't so much memories as projections; visions of what my life would have been like if things had been different. I also went beyond realistic speculation and imagined other things: What if I was somehow responsible for my blindness? What if I had agreed to be visually impaired before I was born into this world? What if I was an alien, sent here on a mission to deliver some important message? What if life was an absurd joke and sacrifices for the sake of others were the biggest joke of all?
And this was just the beginning. Once unleashed, I let my imagination freewheel wherever it wanted to go. I crossed religious, moral and rational boundaries. I stretched the fabric of my mind until nothing shocked me anymore. I didn't even feel guilty about doing it. I just wallowed in crazy, sinister, debased fantasies until I stopped caring what would become of me.
Actually, that isn't entirely true. At regular intervals, I would encounter someone "normal" and "loving" and it would break my heart to realise what I had thrown away. All my good intentions to make a difference in the world now lay crumpled in a dirty heap. So much for the white robes, golden sashes and crowns of glory reserved for saints and angels in Scripture. I visualised myself as one of those wretched souls who get banished into outer darkness because they have omitted to fill their lamps with oil, or failed to give a beggar a drink of water, or refused to visit anyone in prison.
And then I reconnected with this friend. He has a blog in which he logs the progress of his rehabilitation and recovery. It saddened me to think of how difficult his life had become in practical terms, but oddly enough, it also excited me to discover how keenly I felt his emotional agony.
This may sound strange, and I am not saying I relished his pain. What I mean is that, after damning myself as someone who could not feel, not understand and not even care, I seemed to have developed an unexpected capacity for empathy. I wasn't scared of knowing about his broken relationships and impaired speech. I wasn't even threatened by his cynicism about life's meaning and purpose. I had been to those dark places myself, and understood only too well what makes a person lose hope and rage at God and the universe.
In a strange sort of way, his raw ramblings and honest expression of despair, mingled with fierce resolve to keep trying harder, saved me from my own morass of sorrow. I recalled that, in the Old Testament, Jacob wrestled with God and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. God uses the injured, the damaged, the broken and the weak to bring His compassionate presence into the world. I never obtained a theological degree or counselling certificate, but my loss of faith and journey to the underworld, so to speak, gave me insight into suffering that is first-hand and genuine.
Radical change is so traumatic that it cannot be taught theoretically. Knowing the stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance - does not equip you to know why it is necessary for a suffering person to question, renounce and despise his erstwhile hope of glory. Yet going through the experience yourself, pulling up your tent pegs and abandoning yourself to the wild desert wind, enables you to get perspective. Radical change is like an initiation into a different realm of existence. It is a rite of passage that qualifies you - whether you like it or not - to be a witness of the dark side.
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Do visit Leanne’s thoughtful Web site http://diamondpanes.blogspot.com/
