In the past sixty-seven days, I’ve heard repeated the admonition to reach out in our time of isolation to encourage others. Still learning to build healthy boundaries, I’m almost hyperaware of things that rub me wrong. And from the beginning, I found myself slightly irritated by this mantra of “encourage others.” It seemed to assume two things: 1. That Others needed encouraging and 2. That even though we were in the same situation, the encouragers didn’t need to put their own oxygen masks on before assisting the Others.
That irritation grew as I started getting encouraging messages from people. I continued monitoring my reactions, gathering a pile of puzzle pieces, not quite sure what picture they would create. Why did I feel completely encouraged when a friend I rarely text sent me a “Hey, I miss you. Hope you’re doing well” message, but I felt like a squashed bug when someone messaged me that she was praying for me and included three verses on trusting God? A message clearly designed to encourage me didn’t, while a brief chat conversation with an acquaintance about how many days I had been inside left me uplifted. Then this weekend, Brene Brown gave me the linchpin, and the puzzle pieces fit into place. Explaining the difference between sympathy and empathy, Brown uses the example of falling into a pit. Someone with sympathy stares down at you, acknowledges that you’re in a pit, and moves on. Someone with empathy see you in the pit and joins you there. Sympathy puts you in a position of weakness while assuming its own position of strength. Empathy connects you to those outside the pit which ultimately helps you out of the hole. The truly encouraging messages I’ve received are just normal connections with people--empathy. We talk at the already established closeness of the relationship. The messages have not presumed a lack in me, a need for encouragement, a struggle on my part the way that the “encouraging messages” have. Rather the messages referenced our past normal interactions or, better yet, engaged me in conversation. C. S. Lewis talks about the skeptic always seeing through things, forgetting that the point of seeing through things is to see something: we look through the window to see the garden (or, in my case, my neighbors in my isolation). The window is for looking through. In the many hours I’ve stared through my window in the past two months, I look at the window only when it needs to be cleaned. Looking at the window defeats the purpose of its windowness. I think that’s the problem with this push to encourage others. So focused on the window of encouraging, we forget its nature. We send verses to address the presumed (or projected) struggles of others without connecting with the person, who may or may not be in a deep hole. By focusing on the goal of encouraging, we miss the target. Encouragement—empathy—comes through connection. Connection comes from sharing, not wisdom from a stable position above the pit, but rather sharing yourself. Connection comes from asking sincerely “How’s it going?” and accepting the answer even if it’s not what you expected. Connection could even come from admitting your own position in the deep hole. Truly in the past sixty-seven days, the more encouraging messages I’ve gotten were “Hey, missing you on another Thursday. Hope you’re doing well.” Or better yet the continuation of an ongoing conversation, “Hey, I just finished that book you recommended. It was awesome!”
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