Distant Neighbors: On Mourning while Fostering Empathy

I have strong emotions about writing. I feel anger toward this opportunity I have to express myself, and yet not to have it be direct and immediate. This is the reason I studied acting. I wanted to learn how to live the most truthful life I could and find a way to purposefully connect with people in profoundly purposeful moments. Well, left to my own devices, I fell on my face. I determined the only appropriate time to engage with other acting students, my peers, cohorts, and muses, was during scene work itself. At all other times, these richly generous and gregarious souls were distractions whose contagious and thieving traits obstructed my acquisition of greatness. 

These self-reflections make me gag now. I feel anger when I write because there is so much I want to say, and it takes a withdrawn patience that mimics the above behavior, of which I am ashamed, of devoting years to being withdrawn. Yet, this is the craft that sculpts great men and women. It is a medium that can impact lives profoundly and lastingly. 

So, if it is not obvious, anger is not my only feeling about writing. There is deep gratitude I feel for the opportunity to put the material my eyes and ears receive into the written word. Emerson is one of my heroes, and I only know a sliver of how his mind worked because he left us persisting, classic writings: essays that cement him into a tradition of valuable character, unmatched perception, and (hopefully) everlasting impact on readers. 

It’s a lot to ask someone to read anything these days. Maybe I should have started this essay with that sentence, but what’s good art without a little faith? Why shall I begin with a phrase that is effectively an apology?

A man grimaced at me on my serene island home when he turned left from a perpendicular road into the shopping center I was coming out of. Everybody is looking to form the best connection possible with the magnificence that is the stranger. This young man knew he may be seen as an asshole from his generic idea of who I may be. He covered his guilt with defensive and very mild wrath. I understood. I may have done the same. 

And then I thought, maybe everybody does not care to form the best possible relations with strangers. Maybe not everyone sees the stranger as an executive representative of humanity. 

One of the troubles is, most of us aren’t thinking of humanity, despite the truth that we exist within this community that is at a metaphysically higher plane than we have the choice to opt out of. In other words, community is inherent to humanity. While division will always be effective in the short-term by a hateful and passionate hand, division is so tragically damaging and unmendably cruel. The community of humanity will always persist whether we would like it to or not.

I’ve heard several great people, especially those who are artists, be called aliens by people who admire them. I’ve heard several powerfully idiosyncratic hip-hop artists proudly identify as being “not from this earth.” Is this because of the sheen of indifference and the veneer of casualness that is apparently smeared over humanity, at least in American culture?

Genocide is merely a “too bad” scenario because if we are to consider humanity at large, we like to picture people smiling or enjoying croissants at an outdoor cafe, or harvesting rice from paddies, or meditating in robes. We don’t like to consider our distant neighbors as suffering. We would sooner choose to disregard their existence entirely than begin to build empathy for the loss of their lives. ‘Tis better to have not felt another’s life at all than to have connected with them and lost them in death… correct? Didn’t Shakespeare say something like that?

I cherish and adore those who have the bandwidth, the courage, the care, and the passion to actively advance the well-being of people dying in genocidal attacks. I can’t afford to donate, so I shove the care I have for Palestinian children far from my conscious mind. I don’t have the courage to care for someone I know I am going to have to mourn. But mourning is temporary. Life is only experienced in one go. Life is the most precious gift there is, and I’d rather foster empathy than encourage genocide through inaction. 

Right now, I can only think to write about vicious genocides. Yet, I admit I am setting myself up for failure because I have read zero articles about the Israeli-Palestinian war or other mass killings that are happening in other countries and continents. I see the faces of the victims of mass slaughter and I feel bad. I feel far. I feel lucky. I learn to appreciate what I have and forget that what reminded me of my fortune wasn’t a passing, kind comment from a stranger; it was the maiming and execution of several innocent humans. 

I have a loose sense that the victims of the war in Gaza are not just any humans. They are residents of holy land. Humans will do anything to continue experiencing life as they see it should be experienced, and perhaps in the holy land, this drive is amplified. 

I have been to Israel. I can’t even claim my existence is entirely detached from Palestinian and Israeli suffering whatsoever. I wonder, what will reading articles do but either depress me or inform me, only to thrust me back into my comfortable and creatively hungry life? 

There is no peace when there is war in the world. You are not as at peace as you claim you are when people who are just like you in many ways and who are preciously distinct from you in other ways are being slaughtered. All humans smile. All humans die. All humans fear murder. I will work to cherish what I have in common with Palestinians so I can orient myself into a warrior for peace and communal understanding.