Do you know what happens to those of us who think too deeply? Sometimes even feel too deeply? I’ve seen people call themselves “empaths” like that’s something you can just be. No, no my dear, you can’t just be an empath in the way that you can be an artist, or an engineer, or even a good-natured or kind person.
No, this is something that comes from somewhere deep inside. It doesn’t even always come to good, caring people. I assure you, this quality (if that’s what you want to name it) is not bestowed upon the kind-hearted and the loving.
The ability to read people. The ability to know their happiness and the searing hole of their pain deep inside when you really don’t want to care is annoying, frustrating, and painful all in one breath.
I’m not saying I am anything close to being an empath. I’m an observer. When people talk I have a habit of paying attention to their words and their bodies. How their eyes light up when they talk about someone or something or how they change colors at the mention of someone.
What makes them go into deep thought or furrow their brow involuntarily? At times I’m trying not to do that. Most of the time to be honest I don’t want to, because I’m trying not to get involved. However, when you notice a person going from one expression to another and you can feel their heartbeats change with the face and the tone of their voice you have to be made of stone, yeah?
Guess what? I’ve done it. Sometimes I simply don’t care. sometimes I don’t want to take on more than I can chew. If this is what being an empath feels like then this is nothing to brag about. To embrace this is to turn yourself off. Only then can you sanely and objectively help others. If not, then you die inside a little every time knowing what the human condition really is; knowing that people can hurt so much. That there is so much suffering and that there is very little one can do about it.
From a very young age, I was an observer. Gradually I noticed my observations weren’t appreciated because they were considered impolite or inappropriate. I learned that there was no sense in asking people questions like “why do your eyes get that way when you talk about so and so?” Some questions don’t have answers.
I didn’t know what to call it then but now I know that it was a feeling. I was feeling what they were feeling. Happy, sad, remorseful.
Soon after that, when all those feelings got to be too much I turned it all off. Everyone else’s feelings, my own. I feel my own stayed that way, turned off, stone where a heart should be. Careless abandoned, where there should have been thought and reason for my decisions. Others, however, have always been harder to ignore. They frustrate me, even anger me at times, but are still hard to ignore.
The upside or downside of this, depending on one’s perspective, is I can smell B.S. from tens of miles away. After all your heartbeat can’t lie. One can control their face, and their body movement but there’s something about what’s inside a person if you look real closely that gives them away.
You might find this hard to believe but I can get a feeling about people through crowds, whether good or bad. I paid no attention to it because it’s ridiculous to judge people like that…
I should have. Yes, yes you are correct, I’m absolutely in favor of judging people without getting to know them. That obviously is a joke. The point is to trust your instincts. Mine haven’t led me wrong about people so far. I don’t call that being an empath, I call that being a human who sometimes looks at their surroundings and through all the noise, all the clutter, all the chaos of life lets other people tell you their story without saying much because words aren’t everyone’s cup of joe.
To Whom It May Concern 