Empathy is tricky.  It’s different from caring.  We can care about people without a clue as to what is going on inside them.  And it’s easier to have empathy for people who are like us, who respond the way we do to things or ideas or people and who share our culture and language. Extreme differences can make us ill at ease around others. The differences can be in looks, color, age, mental or physical ability, nationality, economic, cultural or even religious.

My mother grew up in the early 1900’s in Mississippi. There were only a few Catholics there and they Polish immigrants who all lived in one neighborhood.  As a child she believed the nuns she saw when passing their school on a bus wore headdresses because they had horns.

Though some people are more interested and curious than afraid of differences, most are not. And negative experiences with a person different from us can make us nervous around all others like them.

Empathy comes easier with people who are most like us. Without time spent in intentional dialogue with those different from us, it is impossible to understand them enough to trust them or work together.

At this time in our own nation, we have become drastically alienated from people who only differ in their politics. And communication across that ravine has become almost impossible.  So even with all our similarities it is impossible to have empathy for one another.

Without goodwill civil dialogue is impossible. Our language, our demeanor, our tone, misinformation, projections from our painful experiences build walls of fear and anger. We are like wounded porcupines unable to kiss and make up.

Both sides have lost perspective on what damage this is doing to America. Violence is becoming more and more common and even acceptable. Nobody wins in a civil war. More Americans were killed in our civil war than in all our other wars. We don’t see that if we don’t learn to work together for the good of all, we will self-destruct as a Nation. Get rid mental and verbal barbed wire and reach out.