Of Chaos and Empathy

Sometimes, I get the feeling that the whole cosmic scheme is more of a game than anything borne of fractals and chaos. I suppose that is simply my limited perception, my view of existence through perpetually anthropomorphic thoughts. Still, this comedy of errors we all play in is quite poignant in its convolutions.

Today is one of those days where the weight of existence sits directly at the back of my heart, dragging it down in gorgeous but messy streaks of watercolour emotion. One pigmented feeling seeps into another; sadness bleeds into anger, anger flows over resignation, resignation courses through hope.

Still, I do not stop. I guess I've taken it quite to heart that I am from pioneer stock. Keep moving, keep going, keep watching the horizon. When the storm is too big and the horizon blurs, watch your feet and take solace in the repetition of one foot in front of the other. When things get painful, I think of the bison in a blizzard. To stop moving is to die. Keep going, keep going, keep trudging, keep moving, keep going until the storm quits. I have yet to encounter the situation where I cannot keep going. Of course, times when the energy to move just isn't there, I've at least had the energy to scream into the wind and, by mercy or by chaos, someone has heard me each time.

I'm not at that point. I'm not in a blizzard, which is why I have the insight to actually write about the storm and what happens to the creatures in it. Today's struggle wholly involves my empathy for others.

First, know that my empathy is pissing me off. I'm looking at this quality of mine in a suspicious light, considering what it has done for and to me over my short history. Because I was compassionate, because I dared walk a mile in someone else's shoes, because I was kind... I am now badly burned and toothsome enough to make me an alien to myself. Diplomacy is now a carefully measured response to be examined and weighed and meted out with pinpoint accuracy. This, too, is foreign to me! Since when is a humane reaction something I have to labour at? How did its ease slip away from me and how did I let myself become so jaded?

Back to the empathy. Even in my scarred state, I'm still feeling an acute physical sense of *noise* in my heart when confronted by other people suffering. So now I'm feeling it, it is affecting me in the physical world, and I'm mentally rejecting it. Empathy without sympathy. Shit. That cannot be good.

See my difficulty?

I want to heal this rift. I'm sure it has everything to do with removing obstacles, properly examining motivations, learning new ways to deal with the information I have. Maybe this means therapy? Better yet, a vision quest. Tell you what, though... you cannot have vision quests when you're a parent. That shit has got to wait.

Huh. Guess I'm at another point where one of my tremendously energetic and bewildering enlightenments could come in handy.

Then again, maybe I can just get through this by moving ever forward. And with lots of coffee.