It can’t happen here, right?
If you look at the people of Ukraine right now and think, “That could be me,” That’s empathy. Good. Empathy is good. Make use of it; spread it around, pour it over other situations. Moving forward, when unfathomably terrible things happen to people, you’ll think, “That could be me. This is terrible. We have to help. We have to make it stop.”
That’s empathy in action, and it can change the world.
But, don’t stop there. Push it a little backwards, too. Apply it to the past. Think back to times you’ve seen people covered in dust and blood, surrounded by rubble, panicked and traumatized, running away from the lives they knew, because to stay was death. Kabul. Syria. In the last calendar year alone. So, so many people. So much war and suffering, since time began.
That could be you, too.
Anytime atrocities happen, people were just living their lives, with families, professions, a favorite pillow, a bunch of leftovers in the fridge. They had governments, systems, promises of stability that so many of us take for granted, too.
They knew the situation didn’t look good, but they had a new baby, a good job, friends, an elderly parent who can’t just up and move. They had hope that it wouldn’t come to this. It can’t happen here, right? We all live every day of our lives walking the tightrope of optimism, when we know how many ways there are to misstep. To balance all the way and cross safely is a miracle, a statistical anomaly.
If you’re feeling a kind of empathy with the people of Ukraine unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, okay. Now you see: That could be me. Stay in that place, that place of empathy, and make connections from there. See the ways we are the same, beyond skin, religion, language. Resist the powerful urge to collect those superficial ways we might be different and hoard them like canned goods lined up for doomsday, talismans to ward off evil, because otherwise it’s too frightening to think: That could be me.
Every time, since time began: That could be me.
