Like most college students, I have a laptop. It is an incredibly useful tool with one exception; it is essentially a paperweight when the battery is dead. All the programs and features of my laptop can’t do any good when there is no power left. My heart stops when I’m working on an important project and with no outlets in sight, I see the message, “WARNING: You are now running on reserve battery power. Please connect your computer to AC power. If you do not, your computer will go to sleep in a few minutes to preserve the contents of memory”.
Well now I know how my computer feels.
For the past year as disaster after disaster have unfolded across the world, a message has been flashing across my mind saying. “WARNING: You are now running on reserve empathy power. Please connect your heart to a power source. If you do not, you will stop caring in a few minutes to preserve your sanity”.
In this past year alone, we have seen unprecedented tragedies from Haiti to Chile to Pakistan to Egypt, Libya, Ivory Coast, and the Gulf of Mexico to Japan. I can’t handle it anymore. I don’t have any empathy left. I feel like a computer with its battery shutting down.
All of my talents and passions are worthless if there isn’t empathy in my heart. It is empathy that will give me the power to continue on. There appears to be no power outlet in sight to recharge my fatigued heart.
It’s not that I don’t care, or don’t feel a need to care. I’m a Christian and I highly value the importance of empathy. But I am exhausted when watching CNN or reading The New York Times. And Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t helped either. I can’t possibly care as much as I know I should for every single tragedy.
I’m describing a phenomenon that psychologists call empathy fatigue. Dr. Mark Stebnicki coined this term in response to his work as a counselor at Westside Middle School shootings in Jonesboro Arkansas. Empathy fatigue is defined as “emotional detachment brought about by prolonged emotional exposure”. To live in this world is to be exposed to prolonged emotional exposure. It is no longer relegated to the professional field of counseling. It is inescapable.
So I respond in one of two ways; I continue to watch the news and become either clinically depressed or hopelessly cynical, or I change the channel to salvage what little heart and empathy that I have left.
My problem is not that I don’t see the hurting in this world. “Awareness” is a chief American virtue, and the multimedia technology environment disallows me much ignorance. My problem is that I don’t see how I can make any substantive impact. I hate how helpless and useless I feel when watching the news. I see massive need in the world and feel completely insignificant and unequipped to help.
Sure I have a little money, but hey, I’m a college student without a full-time job. Sure I have a little experience with humanitarian work, but not on the level needed to create substantive change in the world. So if I am to continue caring, what should my response be to the deepest needs of humanity?
Oddly enough, this question has been posed throughout history in terms of pachyderms, as a commonly quoted adage, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is rather simple, but not easy: biting off one piece at a time, with enough people, and enough time.
You often feel like the responsibility of the world’s issues rests solely on your shoulders. These problems look like a giant elephant that you need to eat all by yourself, and fast!
However, you are not alone in your desire to care for the oppressed and hurting. You are one of millions worldwide who cares deeply. The best way to eat the elephant that is human need, is for each of us to bite off a small piece.
For instance, you can’t feel as much empathy as you should for orphans in Thailand, Kenya, Peru, Romania, and Haiti simultaneously because you realistically can only focus on one. You also can’t realistically address the worldwide issues of sex trafficking, poverty, hunger, and thirst all at once. When you see all of these, you begin to shut down because you’re so daunted by the size of the task. But when you break down these issues into smaller and more focused chunks, you can see yourself actually making a difference.
One person making a small difference is no big deal. But when millions of people each make small differences, it quickly becomes a big deal. The accumulation of little things is no longer a little thing.
Seeing actual positive change arising directly from your actions then reenergizes your weary heart to care again. Working alongside people in the Wheaton area with similar passions can restore your perspective that you are not alone in your endeavors. Seeing actual faces and knowing names can resensitize your calloused heart and rouse you from your empathy fatigue.
As someone once put it, “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action or it withers.” I think we have found our power outlet just in time before our empathy battery dies. Now let’s get started on this darn elephant.
