Behind the Glares: Empathy in Action, How My Husband Helped Catch a Fugitive and How Empathy Can Help a Community
Living Happy
This week a man who was wanted on a warrant out of New Hampshire ran from the place, ducking in and out of the woods and marshlands of our Maine island. People worried that he’d hurt them. People worried that he’d hurt themselves. The police searched for him for about 24 hours before Shaun, my husband, randomly saw him.
“I felt badly for the guy,” Shaun said about seeing him on the side of the road. “He just looked done.”
The man had allegedly stolen a car in New Hampshire. He seemed to have stolen some clothes during his time in the woods, ducking in between neighborhoods, too, because in the 24 hours that included a couple of rain storms, his outfit changed. A lot of people made fun of those clothes on social media posts.
The whole time he was running out there in the Maine woods, I worried for him, because my gut told me there was a lot more to his story than just a guy who stole a car and then ran from the police. And I was right. I’m not going to go into the details about him because they aren’t mine, aren’t my story, and I was told them in confidence, but it reaffirmed something to me that I really believe.
We don’t get to know everyone’s whole story.
We don’t get to know everyone’s whole heart or whole soul, the trouble that might swirl inside them that brings them to the edge, the trouble that might brings us to the edge sometimes, too.
Lately, it seems, that a lot of people are declaring other people’s intent and also decrying their competence, like we lean a bit more toward distrust than trust.
A local man told me this week, “I walk through the grocery store now and people glare at me.”
This guy was once one of the community’s darlings, sought after for boards and for friendships. He came out against a citizens petition lower cruise ships and now he feels like a villain. It’s a small community where I live—just 5,000 or so year round residents. It’s not a place where you want to be the bad guy. But I’ve seen it a lot of times. Someone’s alcoholism brings them to a bad choice and they are vilified. Someone writes a news article. Someone doesn’t write a news article. Someone falls in love with someone they shouldn’t. Someone falls out of love. Someone believes in something someone else doesn’t.
Heroes are made and broken over and over again. We laud and deride.
It’s not just a small town thing. It’s a big town thing and a community thing, too. A politician or a celebrity or sports star or even a writer will be someone’s hero and someone else’s personification of evil.
I know that local man’s feeling. When I was living in another town, when I was even living in this town, I have been in a grocery store and felt those hard stares. But I’ve also felt the love, had people open their arms to embrace me.
Life is a journey of change. It’s about unhappiness and sadness, joy and contentment, innocence lost and sometime found again. And, inside so many of us, there’s a deep feeling of unhappiness even as we strive and succeed and become the occupation or financial status or person or definition of success that our culture tells us we should be.
I think that to be happy or fulfilled, you have to believe change is possible, to import new ideas, to want to grow no matter what the outcome is and no matter what the world thinks of you. The world can’t matter. You are the one that has to matter. And there’s a bit of surrender in all of this, a feeling that you aren’t in complete charge of what happens in your life.
We all want instruction manuals for our lives, but sometimes those manuals? They aren’t there. Who do you trust to do what is right for you and for the community? Are there universals that a community can buy into? That you can buy into? Trust in institutions and in people, according to Deloitte Insights, often comes from a belief in competence and in intent.
The problem is that we often guess at the intent, at the meaning behind why people do the things that they do and we don’t always guess toward those actions in individuals or institutions come from a place of empathy, a place of care for others. Like for that poor man hunkering down and running in the woods for 24 hours.
When I got those grocery store glares, it was because I had left my position on the city council, which I couldn’t continue because my job changed (the company I worked for promoted me) so that I was now the editor of the paper in the same town where I was serving. As soon as my job changed, I sent in my resignation letter. I didn’t attend any meetings or receive any emails until my resignation was officially accepted two weeks later, which was the first meeting after I turned in my letter.
The other local paper, my competition, ate it up. And people ate that up.
I get it. I got it. But that didn’t mean it was easy to walk into the grocery store for a couple of months. And that community was double the size of this one. I think the smaller a community is, the harder those glares can be.
It didn’t matter that I had to take that job because of an impossible human resources situation at my other paper. It didn’t matter that I had to take that job because I was a single mom who had to work, who was living in an apartment where piece of the ceiling occasionally fell down into our hair. The real truths behind everything weren’t part of the narrative.
That’s what I’m constantly telling myself to remember.
We so rarely have the whole story about anyone or anything, and sometimes that makes it feel impossible for me as I try to create novels, but it especially makes it feel impossible for me sometimes when I write news stories that involve humans—real humans behind the decisions and policies and actions that make the news.
It isn’t easy to ease into trust or intuition. We are afraid that the systems and people will let us down. And sometimes they will. And sometimes they won’t. But I truly believe that if all of us can lean a tiny bit more toward empathy? I think we’ll all be a lot better off. A little sympathy might help, too, honestly.
Jill Suttie, writing for The Greater Good, says,
“The ability to connect empathically with others—to feel with them, to care about their well-being, and to act with compassion—is critical to our lives, helping us to get along, work more effectively, and thrive as a society.”
And while it may seem to be lacking in the grocery store or in a town council meeting or a social media, it can be taught according to Suttie, who summarizes the steps laid out in the Dr Helen Reiss’ book, The Empathy Effect: Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences,
“E: Eye contact. An appropriate level of eye contact makes people feel seen and improves effective communication. Riess recommends focusing on someone’s eyes at least long enough to gauge eye color, and making sure you are face to face when communicating.
M: Muscles in facial expressions. As humans, we often automatically mimic other people’s expressions without even realizing it. By being able to identify another’s feelings—often by distinctive facial muscle patterns—and mirroring them, we can help communicate empathy.
P: Posture. Sitting in a slumped position can indicate a lack of interest, dejection, or sadness; sitting upright signals respect and confidence. By understanding what postures communicate, we can take a more open posture—face forward, legs and arms uncrossed, leaning toward someone—to encourage more open communication and trust.
A: Affect (or emotions). Learning to identify what another is feeling and naming it can help us better understand their behavior or the message behind their words.
T: Tone. “Because tone of voice conveys over 38 percent of the nonverbal emotional content of what a person communicates, it is a vital key to empathy,” writes Riess. She suggests matching the volume and tone of the person you are talking to and, generally, using a soothing tone to make someone feel heard. However, when a person is communicating outrage, moderating your tone—rather than matching theirs—is more appropriate.
H: Hearing. Too often, we don’t truly listen to one another, possibly because of preconceptions or simply being too distracted and stressed. Empathic listening means asking questions that help people express what’s really going on and listening without judgment.
Y: Your response. Riess is not talking about what you’ll say next, but how you resonate with the person you are talking to. Whether or not we’re aware of it, we tend to synch up emotionally with people, and how well we do it plays a role in how much we understand and like them.”
I’m not going to have a post on Monday because I’m trying to take some time to live life away from the computer screen this weekend. I hope that’s okay with you, and thank you for being here with me as I try to figure everything out.
As always, you’re an example in compassion and kindness. Thank you for this newsletter, which made me think about compassion and giving people second (and tenth) chances!