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Sunday, November 2, 2008

Everything stops. Everything goes again.

What does it mean to empathize? To walk in someone's shoes?

Does it mean to share their grief? To have faced a similar situation?

To me, empathy means transcending typical boundaries such as race, friendship or personal beliefs to make one's hardship so completely your own that it is impossible to distinguish where one person's pain begins and another person's pain ends.

It means to unplug from your hectic and oh-so-important life to take a quiet moment for someone you may have not known personally, but whose life had a profound ripple affect on those around him, and those close to you.

Empathy is what holds a person's head high and shoulders back in the darkest hour. Empathy is compassion, compassion is love, and love is the steadfast bond that makes people greater than the sum of their chemical and biological parts.

The crack of a pistol shot made everything stop. The intangible power of human contact is what will make everything go again.

RIP.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Dennis.

Anonymous said...

What happened?

dpeterlin said...

a friend's brother lost his life in a way that he shouldn't have.