get it.

Last night, Sondra opens her gift from me out at the first bar on her birthday brewery crawl. One of the books I gave her, The Empathy Exams, catches Amelia’s eye, and a few minutes later, standing off by ourselves, she asks what it’s about. I start relaying this part I remember: empathy is actually a measurable, biological reaction which causes the same part of my brain to light up when I see a stranger slam their hand in a car door as if I was to slam my own hand in the car door. I tell Amelia how this biological response is good and necessary and allows us to feel compassion for other beings, but it also makes us naturally poor listeners. If someone tells me about their recent breakup and my empathy is, biologically, based entirely on a how I felt in my recent breakup – I’m not actually giving credit to how this other person felt, in this situation that was more likely than not vastly different from the one I’m comparing it to in my head. Listening, I’m trying to tell her, doesn’t come naturally to us. It takes effort to be a good listener. In the making of that point, we get interrupted six times, friends arriving to the bar or coming over to say hi or catching Amelia’s eye from across the room. She asked about the book and so I want to finish the point, but while I’m talking I’m thinking, why even are you bothering with this? This is not the place to try to have this conversation.

Later, in a different bar, a different friend asks me about the writing retreat so I start to tell him, and before I know it I’m back to talking about something too deep for a place like this, because he asked and because I don’t know how else to tell it. The bar gets so loud that he’s asking me to repeat myself over and over, and people keep bumping into us, and I laugh because I think it again, what the hell are you trying to have this conversation for? There is a time and a place for conversations like this, and this is not it. And it’s about that time that I call a taxi, say goodbye to the birthday girl and leave the bar, because, I realize, why would I want to be somewhere that doesn’t allow for conversations like this?

(JC, could you be any more O N T H E B U S)