Rivers and Roads

Looking back on 2014, I see the juxtaposition of two phases of my life. The first 6 months of 2014 comprised the end of my time as a college student. The last 6 months included the start of my time as a working professional. Both phases included a lot of transition. In the first half, I did my best to spend as much time with my fellow graduating seniors as possible; I didn’t know when I would see them again. In the second half, I started a new job, got involved in youth ministry, and started traversing the great unknown of the “not having all your friends within a 1-mile radius” world, among other things. One of the biggest things I was anxious about graduation was how my friendships were going to change when we all went our separate ways. Would going our separate ways weaken my friendships? How was this going to all work out? The thoughts of my already strong friendship dynamics changing scared me because of the fear to the unknown.

A couple of months ago, I was introduced to the song “Rivers and Roads” by the Head in the Heart (and that’s why this post is titled as such). In a lot of ways, the song really gets where I’m at. A lot of my friends moved away after graduation and I have no idea when I’ll see a good number of them again. We’re all walking our separate paths now and yes, I do miss many of their faces like hell. Listening to this song helps bring this topic to mind and helps me reflect upon it.

It’s true; there are rivers and roads that separate me from a lot of my friends. But one of the biggest surprises for me is that the distance hasn’t hurt my friendships. Sure the dynamic has certainly changed, but it hasn’t made my friendships any worse. In fact, it’s like the new dynamic has breathed new life into them. Unlike college, when I was having the same type of experience as my college friends, we’re all having different experiences. But it’s in those different experiences where we bond now and there’s a certain really cool thing about that. I learn so much and am fulfilled by listening to the different experiences my friends have. When I do see them again, I’m more appreciative of any time I have to talk and re-connect. The 15-minute conversations I used to think were “short” are now some of the most fulfilling I can have with them. In addition, just because I may not talk to many of them for weeks or even months on end, when we re-connect, it feels like little time has passed. This point was especially driven down when I hung out with wonderful Bellarmine friends recently and a number of us were like, “It’s been six months? It doesn’t feel like that long.”

On the flip side of things, I’m one of those people who has a lot of friends younger than me who are still at SCU. That has definitely been a struggle at times because as much as I would want them to be able to relate to where I’m at, I’m at a different phase of life when they are. It’s been easy to think my life’s not as interesting as theirs (and self-admitting: I’ve been very prone to that the last few months). My pace of life has slowed down, contrasting the “go go go” lifestyle of college they still are a part of. But at the same time, having the different dynamic has helped some of those friendships and helped spark new friendships as well. Outside of my work schedule and my 2-3 regular commitments per week, my schedule is no longer as full. This has given me the opening to cultivate new friendships with those people I wanted to but couldn’t with my previous commitments and also to deepen already-existing ones. Having the extra added energy to pursue those friendships has been a really cool surprise of post-graduation life and is one I hope to continue to take advantage of in the coming year.

As 2014 draws to a close, I feel more settled in with where I’m at with my friendship dynamics changing and transitioning away from being a college student. Here’s to 2015: to visiting out-of-town friends, getting more involved in youth ministry, new retreat experiences, T-Swift concert, and so much more which is currently unknown =)

The Two-Sided Decision of Empathy

A few weeks ago, my good friend Kate shared a really insightful video on the difference between empathy and sympathy. I’ll link to it here if you’re interested in watching it. It’s only 3 minutes long and brings up a lot of good points. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

The part of the video that struck me the most was how it explained that empathy is a choice and a vulnerable one at that. To empathize with someone requires reaching deep within yourself to find an experience that knows the negative feeling that person is going through. It came to light for me a few weeks ago when in the span of 8 days, I was present to 5 different health-related hazards despite not being directly related to the affected person; I was either in the vicinity when the hazards occurred or someone I’m connected to was related to them. After the 5^th one, I noticed I was actively feeling downbeat the rest of the day after hearing the news. I spent a lot of time thinking about that concept and came to the following conclusion: because I cared for those who were directly affected by the news, I decided I wanted to feel their pain. I cared about them enough that their sadness mattered to me, so I made a conscious decision to feel with them. I wanted to empathize and to connect with their feelings, so I was intentionally downbeat as a result.

Today I was having, to put it lightly, an emotionally crappy morning and it wasn’t even work-related. Things were going haywire in my head. I was freaking out over what turned out to be a whole lot of nothing and there were other things I couldn’t make sense of that morning. Gratuitously enough, one of my best friends responded to a funny story I told them and that simple text helped me start the process of getting out of that emotionally crappy place. My emotional state started to stabilize from that moment and the rest of the day I felt I was going to be okay and slowly but surely felt better about things.

When I was at Santa Clara, it was really obvious to most people when I was having a bad day. I would be lacking the energy and happy-go-lucky attitude that people associate with me. People would see that and ask me what’s wrong. But now that I’m in the workplace where I get a lot of time to myself, none of my friends are going to see me continually shrugging and displaying drained body language. I’m starting to realize that if my friends are going to know that I’m struggling or having a bad day, I’m either going to have to text/message them indicating just that or have them happen to contact me when I’m going through that phase. It turns out during that morning, I told only very few people that I was going emotionally haywire when I was in a place where I would’ve just wanted many more of them to message me and remind me that they’re thinking of me.

Reflecting upon that experience, I’m starting to think there’s a second side to this decision of empathy. I make a decision whether to let people have a choice on whether they want to empathize with me. Many times, I instinctively take away the choice from them. For as seemingly adept as I am with reaching out to people to spend time, it’s ironic that I struggle with reaching out during times when I absolutely need support or need a friend. I make a lot of excuses as to why I sometimes don’t want to let anyone into my dark place. These examples include: “I’m only going to drag down the mood.” “I shouldn’t burden them.” “They’re having fun. I don’t want to ruin it for them.” If I would choose to empathize with the people I love and care about in a heartbeat, shouldn’t I give those same people that care about me the opening to decide whether they want to empathize with me? Shouldn’t I trust them to actively want to feel with me when I’m going emotionally haywire and in a dark place? I know today I had a few friends in mind that I was rather close to telling, “I’m having a bad day and I wanted to let you know” and then proceeded not to because I made various excuses not to tell them.

To be honest, these thoughts leave me with more questions than more clear-cut insights. But if there’s an insight I feel more solid about, it’s this: empathy is a two-sided decision. One side of the empathy decision is the choice I make to connect with someone in their emotionally dark place. The other side of the empathy decision is to decide whether to let others choose whether to empathize with me or not; to let others know, “I’m struggling and I need a friend” and to let them make their own decision whether to empathize with me or not. Through all these questions and unfinished thoughts, I can certainly say the latter is a huge growing edge for me in terms of empathy.