Empathy is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. Empathy is known to increase pro-social (helping) behaviors.
-From Psychology Today
Some years ago, a close friend of mine lost everything he owned in a fire. No one was physically hurt, but the entire family struggled with a deep feeling of insecurity for many months afterwards. I remember Steve telling me that only someone who’d suffered the same loss could really understand what they were going through.Three times in my career, I’ve lost my job—all three times to corporate reorganizations of one sort or another. I’d always believed that if I worked hard and did well, that I would never be fired. What is the saying? “They don’t lay off good workers. They get rid of the dead wood.” I know those words, because I said them myself—before it happened to me. I don’t believe in the absolute truth of that saying anymore.
In 2000, there was a proposition on the California ballot to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. I thought about it and voted in favor of Prop 22. Not because of any religious view that I held, or because I was prejudiced against gays and lesbians, but because it made sense to me that marriage was for men and women. That was how I knew it.
Six years later, on a sweaty hike at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, my daughter came out to me, and my views about the legal rights of gay men and women turned from intellectual to very, very personal.
My daughter is now married to an Air Force officer. Two years ago when Heather was giving birth to my grandson, her wife (then her partner) had to lie to request leave to help “a friend” who was having a baby. Adrianna couldn’t share their good news, because if she had, her career could have been destroyed. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed in September 2011, and the Supreme Court will rule sometime within the next few weeks on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 (gay marriage) and DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act).
I have a photo in my cubicle of two women walking on the beach with a little boy in a striped shirt between them. Their backs are to the camera. The evening shadows stretch past them, towards the water. You can see from their ruffled hair that there is a light breeze blowing. Those women could be anyone. They could be strangers; they could be your sisters; your friends; or your neighbors. In fact, they are my dearly beloved daughter, grandson and daughter-in-law.
We form opinions and base decisions on what we know and have experienced personally, and whom we care about. Thirteen years ago, I never imagined that I might be the parent of a gay, lesbian, or transgender child. Now I know that I am, and I care deeply about how these laws affect my family.
There’s an old saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.” What that saying means to me is that I should not hold myself above someone I might otherwise judge negatively, but rather, that I should act from a place of empathy and compassion. I believe in the wisdom of that saying, and try to practice it, because I’ve learned that someday I could be walking in shoes that I didn’t know were mine.
