Have you ever met someone who subtly throws you for a loop? I don’t mean in a bad way, just that while you were talking to this person things were different. Maybe even better?
Let me tell you the story of Paul.
Paul was a person I used to work with. Most days, when I saw him, I would make time to talk to him. You know those common pleasantries we all share? Like:
“Hi, how are you?”
and
“Good, you?”
Now, everyone who exists in society knows, either tacitly or explicitly, that when someone says, “Hi, how are you?” they aren’t really asking. It’s just a greeting. Sure, sometimes you’ll meet someone who, due to their narcissism will throw polite society out the window and verbally vomit at you when you offer a simple, “How’s it going?”. Run from these narcissists! They are the human equivalent of a dumpster fire.
Thankfully, Paul wasn’t this way. But he would eschew the traditional pleasantries, luckily he would replace them with things more interesting. He would often begin with:
Hello! What did you do today?
And, what’s more, he actually wanted to know! It wasn’t some mindless pleasantry. He was interested in you and asking you for a story. When I would tell him about my day he would respond with the standard polite nods and the like, but he would also respond with something else.
And I bet you, dear reader, can guess what it was. If I said I had gone shopping he wouldn’t respond with, “Was it good?” or “How was that?” he would ask something like:
What did you get that you’re most excited about?
or
Did you meet anyone interesting?
As if meeting someone interesting every time you left your house was normal. Well, for him it was normal!
Conversations with Paul always got very deep very fast and were always uplifting. This is how Paul was. If I mentioned something about the snowstorm we had just gotten, he would never say some canned line about shoveling or roads. He would immediately ask and talk about how my feelings about snow changed from when I was a child wanting to play to now as an adult not wanting to shovel.
Now you might be wondering what it’s like talking to someone like Paul when you’re having a bad day. Let me tell you… Pretty fantastic. No matter how I felt before, I always felt better after a conversation with Paul. He always seemed to strike a perfect balance between what I wanted to hear and what I needed to hear.
I often wondered what made Paul so different, so enjoyable to be around. I thought, “Is he some sort of sage or angel?” and “Is he a short, thin, goateed Santa?” When I asked him about the way he was, he was oblivious. He saw no difference between how he interacted with people and how other people interacted. This actually made sense to me since he would bring this attitude out in other people.
Then one day it hit me out of the blue, Paul was very empathetic. That’s it.
Now, years later, I don’t work with Paul anymore but we do still talk on occasion and each conversation is invariably an enjoyable education in empathy.
Why do I mention this story? Because we, as Notebookers, need to be very careful not to fall into the pit of narcissism that Notebooking could be (and journaling always is).
If the last few entries in your Notebook begin with: I think, I went, I saw, I heard, I, I, I, me, me, me! Yuck. It might be time for a few exercises in empathy.
Let’s make Notebooking an act of empathy with these Writing Prompts:
- Think about an experience that you had with a friend where you interacted with someone you didn’t know. Write the experience from the stranger’s point of view.
- Using the same experience as before, write about it from your friend’s perspective.
- Write only good things about a person you deeply dislike.
- We very easily remember when we were children. Remembering what it felt like to be a child is much more difficult. Think of any normal, mundane childhood memory and try to remember what you felt. Write it.
- Go somewhere you often go and write about it as if seeing it for the first time.
I think it’s obvious to say that the world would be a better place if we all had a little more empathy. Never let it be said that Notebookers aren’t empathetic!
