Empathy and Isolation: Life Lessons Part 5

What if empathy was your secret superpower? Join me on this special episode as I share personal reflections on the profound lessons aging imparts, including how learning to view the world through others' eyes can transform relationships and diffuse conflicts. Over the years, I've come to realize that empathy isn't just about understanding others—it's about questioning our assumptions and recognizing our roles in the challenges we face. By sharing anecdotes from my own journey, I hope to inspire you to cultivate this skill, fostering deeper connections and making our divided world feel a little less isolating.

We also pay tribute to the late Marina Keegan, whose collection "The Opposite of Loneliness" challenges us to reconsider the barriers that keep us from truly connecting with one another. Her poignant essays continue to resonate, urging us to embrace our shared humanity and the power of empathy to alleviate loneliness. Her insights remind us that true human connection is about more than love or community; it's about knowing we're all in this together, even when times are tough.

NOTE: Quotes used in this episode are from the essays of Marina Keegan as published in the Yale Daily News and the book, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan, Emily Woo Zeller, et al. Neither the host, producer nor program benefits financially from any purchase made using the above link, nor is any liability assumed for any issues relating to purchases using said link.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older.

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello and welcome everyone to Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older, and thank you for joining us for Life Lessons those lessons that aging teaches us. These lessons help prioritize what is important, what used to be important, and how our attitudes towards this importance changes. Today, I want to talk about empathy and loneliness. Empathy well, some could consider that a superpower. As we mature, we learn to see situations from others' perspectives. We discover that empathy can diffuse conflicts and deepen relationships. This skill can help us navigate complex social situations, become better friends, partners, colleagues, workmates, human beings.

Speaker 2: 1:00

It's something, though, that has to be learned, especially in this day and age. I don't know how empathetic I was as a younger man I like to think I was very much so but I can remember times when my words and my actions did not convey that. I find now that, as I've gotten older, I'm much more understanding of other people's place in the world and their attitudes, and I hope it has made me more tolerant and forgiving of others. Yes, listen, I'm going to be honest. I have a quick temper, so I maybe could use a little more learning in this life lesson category about empathy, but it's really important, no matter what age you are, to begin thinking that because someone isn't necessarily like you in the way you would like them to be. Maybe their political views are different, maybe they have different views about religion or about the universe as a whole, maybe their attitude towards their fellow man does not match yours. Maybe we could be asking the question why. Someone once said that to understand a person, you must walk a mile in their shoes. I used to think that was just a nice catchy phrase to say something out of the 60s and 70s, but I understand it now. Say something out of the 60s and 70s, but I understand it now.

Speaker 2: 2:28

I recently had a situation at work where a co-worker was slightly irritating, shall we say. But I began to think why is that my attitude? What is happening in this person's life that might make them behave the way that they do? And if I knew what that was, would I be more understanding of this person's actions? And once I started looking at it from that point of view, then my coworker became a human being again to me and our relationship changed for the better. And if there was a problem with it before I realized, I might have been the problem. So if empathy is a superpower, maybe that day I was able to fly a little bit off the ground.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Understanding what people are going through is so important. I've mentioned this before. We live in a divided world. It's getting sometimes harder every day to feel as one with your fellow citizen, the person you work with, your neighbor. We're becoming so isolated nowadays and I think there's a little more understanding we might not feel that pang of loneliness that maybe makes us feel this way Empathy and loneliness our own loneliness and that of others.

Speaker 2: 3:53

I read an interesting essay that a friend of mine turned me on to. It was written back in 2012 by a young lady named Marina Keegan. Marina Keegan was a student at Yale. She graduated magna cum laude in 2012. She had written a series of essays that got published, unfortunately, most of them after her tragic death, only five days after she graduated from Yale at the very young age of 22. What a light we lost. But she wrote in one of her essays, and that's called the Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan.

Speaker 2: 4:34

I urge you to buy this. I get no compensation for it, but I'm going to put a link in the show notes to where you can find out more information about Marina Keegan. What a fascinating young woman she was and her thinking, the way that she thought about herself and her relationship with the world was so amazing. She wrote and this is a direct quote I worry sometimes that humans are afraid of helping humans. There's less risk associated with animals, less fear of failure, fear of getting too involved. She also said it's not quite love and it's not quite community. It's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together, who are on your team when the check is paid and you stay at the table when it's 4 am and no one goes to bed that night with the guitar.

Speaker 2: 5:31

That night, we can't remember that time. We did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. And she also wrote we don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want with my life. What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds, we can start over. We must not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have. I want enough time to be in love with everything. What wonderful words, wonderful thoughts. There is no word for the opposite of loneliness, and yet it's what we all strive for so hard, and maybe the way that we get there is just through a good, healthy dose of empathy.

Speaker 2: 6:34

This is Bill Monte. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode. If you have any comments, you can scroll down in the show notes and just click on the link that says you can leave a comment. It'll take you to another page it's called SpeakPipe as a tool, and you'll have 90 seconds to leave your comment, and I do so appreciate it. I do so appreciate that you take the time to listen to these episodes, and I hope that you get as much from them as I get from putting them together and then putting them out there in the universe. Until we talk again, my friends, I urge you, be kind and be safe.

Speaker 1: 7:18

If it's warm outside but you're feeling cold, you're not sure what to do. Without a friendly shoulder, you're not alone, so start feeling bolder. Welcome to Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older.