He Survived the Lobster Boat Capsizing Friday
Empathy, Bullies, Kindness and Living Happier
When I was a little kid, I used to get bullied a lot for my voice. My s-sounds slosh around a bit and I sometimes sound a bit like Marcel the Shell.
One time in fourth grade, one of my major bullies got told on after a recess event. He’d been bullying pretty hard, marveling in how many takes on s-word rhymes he could do as I plastered myself against the chain link fence that separated the playground from a road.
I cried because I just felt so trapped and had no hope. Then another girl and her squad came over and made him stop. She was one of the toughest kids in school because she swore sometimes on the bus, and I was pretty terrified of her, but I helped her with her homework on the bus sometimes and gave her some of my lunch.
She planted herself in between us and then backed up to me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and declared that I was her friend. Then she hustled me over to the teacher and told.
In class, my teacher sat my bully and me on her lap and talked about what happened—in front of the whole class, which was horrifying—but I’ll always remember sitting right there next to him on her very pregnant lap and not being afraid because I knew that some other kids had my back and I knew that my teacher would keep me safe.
She asked him how he thought he made me feel and he said something like “bad, I guess.”
And she asked me how I felt and I said something like “I’m really worried about HIS NAME WHICH I AM NOT WRITING because now everyone knows he bullied me again and they might be mean to him.”
“You’re worried about him?” she asked.
“I am,” I said.
And he started to cry.
He also ended up doing a lot of really cool things and became a social worker. And my teacher told me I was a lovely special soul or something silly like that, but it helped me feel better right then.
It’s not a typical bullying story, but it is important to me because it is about empathy: that girl, my teacher’s, mine, and eventually my bully’s.
When I grew up, my little, spitfire mom (the fiercest, kindest mom around) told me that it’s always good to try to understand people—even the meanies. When I asked her why, she’d say, “It makes you stronger than them. Understanding is a secret weapon.” If you could figure out what made them tick, you could anticipate their actions, protect yourself.
My little pacifist hobbit dad would tell me that when you understand people it is easier to be gentle with them and yourself.
Two slightly different approaches, right? But both my parents thought that understanding others was important. I think that understanding leads to empathy.
THE LOBSTERMAN POLITICIAN
So, why am I talking about this? Well, it’s because my heart got sad today a bit. This is not because we have to do a news story about a business and we want to be fair to them and they hung up on us. I get that. But because of something I saw on Facebook today.
There’s a Maine politician who also lobsters. He lives pretty close to here. He’s a majority leader in the state house and has views that are antithetical to some other people’s views.
This isn’t an endorsement of him or of them.
But this weekend, right before the hurricane, the lawmaker almost died. He was on a lobster boat, a rogue wave hit and overturned it.
He retells this all in a public Facebook post and calls out God a lot within that post.
He and another man were fishing Friday. He writes,
“We were in probably 50’ of water when the towering wave struck us quarter to on the starboard side. I have a snapshot in my brain of the wall of water towering over us. It’s not normal for waves to break in that depth, but this one crested. I just remember the force. It hit like a freight train.
I didn’t know this in the moment but later realized I had gripped the wheel so tight and was torn off with such force that the calluses on the palm of my hand were torn off when I was ripped from the helm.
The water hit me with so much force that my pants and underwear were pulled to my ankles. In a split second an amount of time neither of us can visually remember a 40’ by 15.2’ vessel was turned upside down landing on top of us. My biggest fear is drowning. I don’t know how deep I was but I just remember the sound of rushing water and looking to the light.”
He wrote:
“My biggest fear is drowning. I don’t know how deep I was, but I just remember the sound of rushing water and looking to the light. It was almost like I was pulled or pushed to the surface.
“I didn’t even get a taste of salt water let alone a swallow. How? How was I not crushed or drowned?
“When I rose out of the water it was surreal. It looked like a battle scene. The boat was turned over keel up, engine was running, the prop was spinning, debris was floating and smoke filled the air. But I had the strangest vivid thought. I thought it in these actual words: “this water is as warm as bathwater”. Other people might have scientific or other theories, but that was the presence of God.
The story is really compelling, horrifying and hopeful all at once as they both survive. And so many of the comments are beautiful, kind, and hopeful, too.
Except some of them. Occasionally, there’s someone who takes offense at him calling out God or says that his retelling of the tale is self-serving, who write that they wouldn’t vote for any candidate or politician that says “God is real” in their post.
And that breaks my heart a little bit. Not because I’ve ever voted for Billy Bob, but because:
It takes a lot of hate to focus on that in a large story about belief and triumph and fear, and to write that hate out on the post? That’s sad. That’s a lot of sadness.
I want people to be able to say God is real or that God isn’t real with some grace.
I want people to feel for other people when they go through terrifying things.
I think empathy matters.
There’s a quiz over on the Greater Good where you can track how empathetic you are.
Before they head into the 28-question quiz, they write:
“Empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. Research suggests that empathic people tend to be more generous and concerned with others’ welfare, and they also tend to have happier relationships and greater personal well-being. Empathy can also improve leadership ability and facilitate effective communication.
But research also suggests that people differ in the extent to which they experience empathy. So how empathic are you?”
Us writers are often told, and often cling to, the theory that reading helps people increase their empathy, helps them imagine themselves in other people’s situations and feel through the stories built on the page.
In a feature “Cultivating Empathy” by Ashley Abramson on the American Psychological Association, she writes,
“In a society marked by increasing division, we could all be a bit more kind, cooperative, and tolerant toward others. Beneficial as those traits are, psychological research suggests empathy may be the umbrella trait required to develop all these virtues. As empathy researcher and Stanford University psychologist Jamil Zaki, PhD, describes it, empathy is the “psychological ‘superglue’ that connects people and undergirds co-operation and kindness” (The Economist, June 7, 2019). And even if empathy doesn’t come naturally, research suggests people can cultivate it—and hopefully improve society as a result.
“‘In general, empathy is a powerful predictor of things we consider to be positive behaviors that benefit society, individuals, and relationships,’ said Karina Schumann, PhD, a professor of social psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. ‘Scholars have shown across domains that empathy motivates many types of prosocial behaviors, such as forgiveness, volunteering, and helping, and that it’s negatively associated with things like aggression and bullying.’”
Empathy doesn’t belong only on one side of the political spectrum. It belongs in all of us. And we need to cultivate it even it’s hard.
DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE and LOVING THE STRANGE
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BE BRAVE FRIDAY
Here's a big truth about me (big truths are sometimes brave): Sometimes I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, but I do it anyway.
Here's another one: I am okay with just being me. People are constantly trying to toughen me up, telling me to be fiercer, more outspoken, less (cough) milquetoast.
I am someone who has nightmares about M.t. Anderson telling you that you can't read your passport and you're going to miss your plane or Amy Sarig King saying, "Carrie! HURRY UP!"
Nightmares aside, I'm okay with just being me. Someone who keeps trying. Someone who is sort of naive about the world sometimes and who keeps consistently forgetting how evil things can be. Someone who still hopes. Someone who uses big colors and big emotions to live. Someone who believes in magic.
I hope, I really hope, that all of you can be okay with you, too. Sometimes that is an act of bravery to be that way, but the thing is? That you get used to it once you do it a lot, usually.
It's okay to be you.
Really.
Even when other people want you to be something else. You can be you.
This is very green, this painting in progress. I am also very green and a person in progress.
