(My father sitting on my brother's memorial bench in Central Park with my sister, Carol. This was how he was choosing to live his last months earth side.)
In Isabel’s Wilkerson’s book, Caste, she describes what radical empathy means. Radical empathy: means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you never have been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it.
What a different world we would be living into if we embraced this practice in all of our encounters. We simply cannot know what another is feeling without remaining aware, intentional, curious and as receivers of what is being shared our way.
I have experienced a hand full of life changing moments with this practice when I was immersed in radical empathy. One that stands on its own is when I had flown from my home in Maui to be with my dad in NYC as he awaited brain surgery at the age of ninety-four on a malignant brain tumor. As I walked into his hospital room he almost appeared startled as he might have forgotten I was coming? I’m still not clear about that, yet the look on his face was one of utter terror.
I closed his hospital door, pulled my chair alongside his bed and invited him to please look at me as this is something my sister said he had been unable to do, to engage in eye contact. I then very intentionally asked him what he wanted? Did he feel called to undergo the surgery or did he desire to go home on hospice?
The words I uttered to him were that this was his choice to make. He was not disappointing anyone to not undergo the surgery and that whatever he decided was courageous. Dad slowly looked up through his signature long eyelashes and said, “When it’s your time, it’s your time and I don’t want the surgery.”
Oh, there was some pushback and dismay from a few and I even heard someone say, “I cannot believe he’s not having the surgery as he’s always been such a fighter.” He was resolute and at peace with his decision and for me that was all that mattered. His nurse removed all the before surgery gizmos that had been placed all over his forehead with purple ink too and his entire countenance immediately felt lighter. Utilizing his full agency, making his needs known and getting to go home on hospice to live out his last months was what he longed for.
I sense dad had boarded the speeding surgery train because it was inherently what he believed was expected of and from him. Fearful of not wanting to let anyone down created a vortex of chaos around his ability to hear himself process aloud. He was being the obedient, faithful soldier and going along with a decision which on a soul level he was not in alignment with.
Radical empathy was the life sourcing medicine in his hospital room and it pivoted one of his most important life choices. My father left this human incarnation on his terms and filled those last months with heartfelt and meaningful visits.
This practice moved through me when I stepped aside and asked for inner guidance. My only task was to be present and to allow my father the grace to make his choice and to validate whichever one he made as courageous, because clearly both were.
Sharon Charde shares, “Right now, there is so much suffering. All of us know someone who is struggling. Reach out. Think how the world could change, one act of radical empathy at a time. If ever there was a time that called us to be our best selves, it is now.”
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