There is an
article that discusses whether empathy is a limited commodity. Ours is a world where some resources are depleted. There are no more Blue walleyes or saber toothed salmon. Others are on the verge of disappearance, like the kakapo and saiga. I confess I would not miss them personally, though I wish them well.
Fossil fuel is in high demand, and will run out. Solar power and wind, on the other hand, come from a bottomless reserve. But in which category is empathy? Can we be over stretched by the unrelenting stories of bomb victims, refugees and child porn? Can we care for an entire nation? The author posits that when the victim is personalized, rather than global, compassion can breathe.
There was a line in C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters that recalibrated my thinking. The devil reminded his protegee to keep the Christians focusing their altruism on anonymous throngs of sufferers across the ocean, in order to distract them from being kind to the person across the table. The notion has come back to convict me, when I am terse with John as I put the final touches on a project destined for someone I will never meet.
I am a fan of the one on one design of God's Plan for marriage. We are given a single person to lavish empathy on first, with a secondary layer of children, extended family and friends. The irony enters when we find ourselves less patient with our spouse than we might be with an orphan whose picture shows up in our mailbox. If we fall for the ruse that empathy is in short supply, we become stingy.
But love is no more finite than music, joy or laughter. It is in sharing it that it expands exponentially.
