Mind the gap or bridge the gap?

Mind the gap or bridge the gap?

“Mind The Gap” signs appear around the world.  I first saw them many years ago in Toronto. They remind people to pay attention when they are presented with the gap between platform and vehicle as they board or leave trains at transit stations .

It’s important to mind some gaps, like the one between train and platform, and it’s important to bridge other gaps. This website celebrates the choice to bridge the perceived gaps that cause us to forget we are love.

A friend and I were recently discussing if empathy can be taught.  I say yes.  The friend says no.  It doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong.  We both agree it’s important to shine the spotlight on empathy.

What is empathy?  If you want a proper definition, I invite you to research to your heart’s content, not your mind’s content.  Hearts are more easily contented than minds.  Hearts are about unity.  Minds search for ways to divide us, even create gaps.  I’m here to bridge gaps, so please research away!

I’ll define empathy as finding ways to understand each other.  Some people make a career of looking for ways to understand each other.  Some people make a career of looking for ways to focus on self alone.

I think one of the best ways to alienate each other is making yourself right and someone else wrong, or vice versa.  Much of the time, we don’t even know we’re doing it.  We impose our limited experience of life upon others, expecting they will act, believe, or feel as we do.  We  expect others to vote as we vote, fear as we fear, live as we live, eat as we eat, and die as we die.

Yeah, not so much, gang.

I learned a lot about empathy in college, and I learned even more about empathy as a brain injury caregiver.  I took courses in phenomenological psychology and philosophy in college.  A last minute death in my immediate family caused me to abruptly change my college plans, and I wouldn’t have taken the psych and philosophy courses that helped me become a more empathic person if I’d stayed with the original plan.

These classes helped me understand that people have the right to experience their lives their own way.  If I wanted to develop good relationships with people, I needed to develop empathy for myself, and I needed to develop empathy for other’s lives.

Brain injury caregiving took my education to the next level.  My healthy brain was unable to understand a brain that was hurt.  The only way I could make a connection was through the heart.  I learned a higher level of empathy from not being able to connect with my loved ones any other way.

If your life path is different than my life path, then I invite you to allow me to introduce you to the Empathy Museum.  You can read about their mission and current events by visiting www.EmpathyMuseum.com.

The Empathy Museum introduces people to ways to bridge the gap that can divide us from each other.  I so love what they do!  They offer a Human Library that allows you to borrow a person for a conversation.  If you visit www.athousandandonebooks.com, you can read about their new project that allows people around the world to read books donated because the donor loves the book so much they wanted others to have the chance to read it, too.  And then there’s “A Mile In Their Shoes, ” a project that allows people to get to know others while they wear their shoes.  From neurosurgeons to sex workers, visitors hear the stories of others.

It is quite powerful to wear the shoes of another.  I know this from a similar but different kind of experience.

I have never been to The Empathy Museum, so I can’t discuss their offering an experience of wearing another’s shoes.  I needed a pair of shoes a few years ago and began wearing my deceased mother’s shoes.  I’d bought her very good quality shoes after her fall, much better quality shoes than I could currently afford. I was only looking for a different pair of shoes.  I didn’t expect to have any other experiences.

My mother’s energy was still in her shoes.  I am intuitive and empathic, so I unexpectedly felt what she felt during her brain injury and dementia years in a way I wish I’d felt before.  I could have done so much more to help her if I’d understood the degree of fear and confusion she’d experienced.

The shoes at The Empathy Museum come with audios.  If you aren’t intuitive or empathic, the audios will help you understand the stories that come with the shoes and help you empathize with others better than before.

As the poem, Walk A Mile In His Moccasins by Mary T. Lathrap, says:

“Just walk a mile in his moccasins
Before you abuse, criticize and accuse.
If just for one hour, you could find a way
To see through his eyes, instead of your own muse.”

I believe each of us, no matter how intuitive we are, how empathic we are, how experienced we are, how smart we are, or how loving we are can increase how much empathy we feel for each other.  Indeed, do we have a good reason not to do this?

If you plan to be in London, UK, during February, please do visit their traveling exhibit listed on the website of The Empathy Museum.  If you have no plans to visit London, UK, empathy can be developed in many ways.  I invite you to explore the website to spark your own deepening journey into developing empathy.

Will you bridge the gap, or will you mind the gap?

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