Writing a memoir - Essay Example

I have deeply experienced emotions like envy or anger toward people that have done me wrong. I expect in that respect I am like everybody else. I once had an occasion to feel an entirely different emotion, and a completely unexpected one at that, toward a person who committed wrongs against not only me, but many of my friends. When this happened, it came as such an incredible surprise to me that even today I have trouble explaining it to people. To feel a sense of compassion that came upon me so suddenly and unexpectedly really upset the balance of my sensibilities.

I think what I learned from the experience the most is that the way human beings respond to each other is not as predictable as most people probably think. I once came face to face with my own feelings toward a bully that made me reassess my own ability to feel empathy toward someone who had never done anything but expressed profound hatred toward me and others. This bully's name was Fidel and he had a habit of picking on people. One day a kid fought back and Fidel was on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned whooping.

My sympathy went toward Fidel who had been such a perfect model of a bully rather than the little kid who had avenged us all. Why Why on earth did I suddenly feel this compassion toward a person for whom I had never felt anything but contempt I realized that day that the mind is far more than a mystery; it is a comic mystery, forever capable of upending expectations. What I learned from feeling an unexpected depth of emotion toward someone that I normally feared and despised was that placing some kind of expectation upon emotions is senseless.

Whenever I hear someone say something like "nobody would ever react in such and such a way" what they are really saying is everybody reacts the same way to every circumstance. My compassion for a brutal bully allows me to laugh at people expressing such remarkably unimaginative beliefs. The experience with Fidel and the intrusion into my consciousness of empathy toward a bully rather than his victim helped to shape a new understanding of myself by trying to understand others. What is empathy for, exactly What is the purpose of having a reaction to someone else that surprises yourself as much as it surprises others around you This experience taught me that not all people have the capacity to feel profound empathy.

If empathy was a natural state of affairs, would there have been as many wars and as much antagonism between people and groups as exists now The shocking realization that one can actually feel an authentic and genuine empathy, by which I mean placing oneself into the shoes of another and feeling what they feel, or at least a close approximation, is something that unbalances every person. Many people say they feel empathy toward a person, but what they really mean is sympathy. They feel sorry for them.

I did far more than feel sorry for Fidel. It was almost as if I could penetrate into his soul and actually understand the reasons behind why he became a bully. I also understand what it meant for him to be brought down to size. Even today I still think back to that experience quite a bit. Not because of what happened to Fidel or even what happened to me, but because whenever I hear someone so confidently express the opinion that a person or a group of people could never have been expected to respond with a particular emotional to an event I realize that they have probably never had the occasion to be thunderstruck by an emotional reaction themselves that had the power to knock of them off their feet.