Unlearn & Relearn & Process & Write & Teach &....

Sorting the wide array of emotions I'm feeling today.   Maybe it was reliving some scary days the past 5 years yesterday, maybe it's how everyday this week I logged onto facebook to find another member of our ALS family has passed, or maybe it was the extra rough wound care this morning.  

Typing through mosquito's lunch time, I'm trying to breathe through each word I type.  Writing through the ride I call, Feeling It All Express, gives me a nice space to process it all.  Some days it happens in a journal; other days like today, you get to see it all here raw and sprawled out on the screen.  

There was a point in my life, where I realized I felt other's emotions with them (sometimes for them), and considered it to be a societal norm.  Imagining that it was a human species thing, you know to have natural empathy for others.  To my dismay it's not a normal thing.  It really was a hard lesson to learn that not everyone is empathic.   

Through my years of feeling others pains and joys with them, to having true care or love for them, I've had hundreds attempt to discourage me from continuing this, with words like: "You really need to separate from it." "That's not yours." "Why do you care so much?" "Stop taking on the worlds problems."....

No one telling me, these, that they consider, words of wisdom, meant any harm in trying to teach me to separate from others.  However, none of them ever had a chance.  This was a core of who I am, and not even years of having my heart broken and carrying other people's emotions, would ever rid it. Ingrained behaviors, once understood, can hold such power. Now while, I still feel the world around me, I am able to find balance much easier these days. 

I also learned, that people CAN learn to be empathic. 

We've been taught to separate from one another, to stop feeling others emotions, because it's not ours; so much that we've become numb to hurting others.  I don't believe this is innate in anyone.  It's all learned, hatred/disconnect/numbness it's learned.  So it can of course be unlearned.  Truly I'm convinced if we all started to feel more of this world, instead of disconnecting; we could solve all of live's problems.

For instance, you should care that others husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, daughters, moms, dads, etc are dying from ALS (any disease really).  It shouldn't be something you hide from your news feed, because it's too sad to look at. Because with how much we've poisoned ourselves/are being poisoned you will in your lifetime know someone with ALS/MS/Cancer/Lymes/etc.  

I am envisioning a world where people will rally for true treatments for these illness, like they do politics.  I see people put their every bit of energy into rallying behind a politician, but then in every other area of their life, they are disconnected.  Hiding the world's problems doesn't keep you safe from them.  Hiding the world's problems also certainly doesn't make them going away.  

Let's all stop hiding.  Seriously, and feel things again.  Care about our planet, and the people on it.  I wouldn't even waste my time on this, if I didn't actually see it as a possible thing.  So what's the best way to teach someone empathy/care/love?  Show it to them (everyone).  Really show it, and watch the change.