Music, Empathy, and the Storming of the Capitol

They say studying music makes you a more empathetic person.

And being an empathetic person makes you a happier person because you can see other people's points of view. You can understand them and get along with them better.

Empathy defined as putting yourself in another person's shoes. Knowing what they know. Feeling what they feel. But, empathy is often misunderstood.

Imagine you never tasted chocolate before.

A friend tells you about chocolate for the first time. You ask her to describe the sensations. She tries. But there are no words she can use to truly make you understand what chocolate tastes like.

No matter how much you try to imagine what she feels, you will not understand the sensation.

In our teaching, we have to exercise empathy with our students all the time.

We can never fully relate to a child's world that always had the internet.

It's hard to imagine being a kid and never needing to wait until 8pm on a Saturday night to watch this year's airing of the "Rudolph special."

(Incidentally, we recently discovered that kids don't know what "specials" are anymore...different times indeed...)

We can't understand why something like the fidget spinner became so popular. 

We can't ever be 100% empathetic. Because we are not them. It's impossible. 

But we have to try our best in order to understand our students. To understand their wants, needs, hopes, dreams, problems, frustrations and fears in order to teach them effectively. 

Giving up on empathy means just turning the page in a method book week after week for every student and hoping for the best. Not for us. We know it rarely works out.

So, why am I talking about this?

I don't need to go into detail about what happened on January 6th. There are plenty of news outlets for that.

But, let's talk about our reactions and empathy for a moment.

When these sorts of things happen, we are understandably horrified and outraged.

Our natural tendency is to create villains out of the rioters and continue the story about the struggle between good and evil. We humans are natural storytellers. That is our story, and has been for centuries.

Sadly, news and social media take advantage of this tendency of ours to win clicks.

We announce to the world how outraged we are.

We make sure the world knows we are not "like them."

We announce to the world the righteous stand we are taking.

We say we are going to work to make a better future. We are going to show the other side the light.

And this is all fine and wonderful. But, has it actually worked out the way we thought it would recently?

Or have we been practicing inefficiently all this time? (forgive the music pun...can't be serious all the time...)

When we attempt to empathize with the other side, the thoughts usually begin with:

If I were them...
If only they could see...
Why can't they understand?
It's so obvious...
If we do [insert act of good], then maybe...

But, this isn't really empathizing.

If we were them, we would have had more common sense.

No. If we were them, we would have also stormed the capitol. But we are not them. 

We haven't grown up with their circumstances.
We haven't downloaded their parents' values.
We don't know what it's like to grow up in most parts of the country outside of home.

But they have done or known all these things. And they believe they are right. They believe we are the villains.

With that, I would like to propose a new strategy.

Let's try to empathize with them as much as possible. True empathy, I mean. And then, open a conversation.

Before you close this blog post, let me clarify those last few sentences. When we empathize, we are not condoning their actions. We're not agreeing with them. We're not saying they are right. No, no, no.

But, try to imagine for a moment.

Imagine the wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams, joys, problems, fears, pain, background, and circumstances that would lead someone to participate in what happened January 6th. Believing himself or herself to be the hero, yet.

Suddenly got a whole lot more complicated, right?

Perhaps if we can try to understand the other side, try to relate to their pain, attempt to feel what they feel even though we're not them...we can have an actual conversation with the other side.  

Perhaps then, we can make real change happen.

They might not want to talk. But, I bet some will.

It might even turn out that we all want the same things. Maybe not.

Either way, it sure beats turning the page in the method book again...