Radical Empathy - An Attempt

I know the current political climate makes falling into a narrative of division very easy. The frustration with our fellow citizens grows. We can’t understand how they could possibly have voted the way they did. How they could believe what they do. How they could do what they do.

 We question their sanity, their intelligence, their education.

In short, we make them into, well, “them”.

The “them” who are ruining our world. “The bad guys”.

It is easy to see the “them”.

It is much more difficult to see what is going on underneath. It is hard to recognize that they are in just as much pain as we are. Maybe even more. There are anger and fear. A feeling of helplessness and not being heard. 
Any good customer service rep can tell you that the most important thing to do if you want to calm down an angry customer is to make them feel heard. People don’t actually need you to fix their problem right then but they need to know and feel that you are listening to them and taking them seriously. Everyone needs to feel heard. Especially when they are in pain.

And still you may insist: 

“Voting the way they did makes them stupid, I don’t care about how much pain they are in”. 

In saying this, you are proving them right, you know? You are reinforcing their perception that their problems are not worth listening to. That their pain doesn’t matter.

You could also argue that they are in a lot less pain than other people. That there are people who are worse off. But we all know not to play that game. We all know that there is always someone worse off and that knowing that does not change the fact that it hurts. 

It hurts. So much. Right here. Right now. Why won’t you look at me? Why won’t you at least acknowledge that I am here, too? That I am hurting, too?

And still you ask:

How could they vote like this?

But in all earnestness, how could they not?

It is our government's job to represent them just as they represent us. To make them feel heard. To tell them, “Yes, you are my people, too. I worry about you, too. Your problems are not meaningless. We can work on this”. 

The “them” never heard that message. So they voted for whoever bothered to speak to them. They voted for who made them feel heard.

Maybe there is no logic to that. But there is a whole lot of “human”.