The Living Dead

From a very early age I couldn't help but feel other people's pain. I guess you could say I was born a "bleeding heart" liberal. I desperately wanted to change that part of myself because I felt my excessive sensitivity made me "weak". I did everything I could to cover it up, but as I look back I can see how my efforts to make me "stronger" paradoxically made me a much weaker person. It takes an enormous amount of energy to pretend to be someone your not and to conceal true feelings, especially when one is endowed with intuitive awareness or the capacity to experience the higher emotions.

Recently I compared my family to that of the The Osbournes , and while there is a grain of truth to that, the Keaton family (Family Ties) comes a great deal closer to the truth, and of course I was Alex Keaton. I was always challenging and bashing my parent's political views as if somehow I would change their minds or convince myself. Luckily I failed miserably.

It takes a hell of a lot more courage to fully embrace a sensitive nature, rather than take the cowardly way out and render oneself insensitive, all in an effort to avoid the pain. Eventually, not only will that person avoid feeling pain, he or she will also be unable to feel anything at all including joy, hope, love and all the things that make life worth living, in other words he or she will flatline and join the ranks of the "living dead"or as many people call them, the Republican party.

Anyone can walk away from pain, but to risk feeling the pain is a sign of enormous strength, not weakness. It is purely an act of courage. Facing pain head on with the willingness to do the hard work necessary to get through it can only make one stronger because it involves conquering people's greatest fear, their own vulnerability.

Be sensitive in every way possible about everything in life. Insensitivity brings indifference and nothing is worse than indifference. Indifference makes that person dead before the person dies. Indifference means there is a kind of apathy that sets in and you no longer appreciate beauty, friendship, goodness, or anything.

So, therefore, do not be insensitive. Be sensitive, only sensitive. Of course it hurts. Sensitivity is painful. So what. Think of those that you have to be sensitive to. Their pain is greater than yours. When you talk about victims and injustice, you are speaking about something that is universal. It is with us as much today as it was during the war years.

Sensitivity is inclusive, not exclusive. If you are sensitive, you are sensitive to everything. You cannot say I am only sensitive to this person but not to others. That is not only counterproductive, it's self-defeating. It's not only because of religion, or because of social problems, or of medical problems, that you must be sensitive. There is nothing more exciting than to be a sensitive person. Because then you listen, and you go out and you hear the birds chirping and it's great. You see a person in the street, you do not know his face and you think, "Who knows what secret that person carries?" Which means you learn and you learn and you learn and you become enriched to a point that afterwards it overflows. -- Elie Wiesel