I practice empathizing everyday, and it goes only so far. I get better and better at it with every story, assessment, and observation. My clients are teaching me to understand that there are rarely the social absolutes that I navigated in my early adulthood. One being that if you just work hard enough you can be anything you want. I know now that some people have subtle or extreme advantage. Some people have trust funds, others have land grants, others have highly educated parents, some lived in convenient places, and some just look more appealing. The simple generalizations that once helped me create allies and enemies is now a complex M.C. Escher painting where proving isn't helpful and only describing has any grip.
I drive home every day and people watch. Asking in my head what did that person do today to earn what they have? How did that person contribute to others or was it all about getting theirs? What makes that person fulfilled or are they a sieve? How come that person needs a BMW to drive the same distance that person with a 68 pick up does? What goes on in that building that they need landscaping? What would life be like without business and money? I accept that what people think what they need is growing and so is there need to feel deserving of everything...me too.
I think about what people spend money on and wonder how interesting and creative their rationality becomes for the waste. It becomes a way of creatively justifying the hints of immorality to counter any contradiction, upholding and building a reason that fits a socially acceptable category. I think everyday that if we only took what we need and shared our extras, would we have poverty, heroin addicts, luxury cars, races, fences, hair stylists, airplanes, electrical grids, licensing boards, passports, visas, or nuclear weapons facilities. Would we need social media? Would we have more gardens than bars? Would we have community fitness versus elite memberships? Would we have a healthier industry around health care? Would be still create economies and products out of wellness?
The brain might function the same way in every human. The brain might release the same types of hormones, synthesize chemical cocktails in the same way, and grow and die in the same way, but each brain will never experience the same scenarios with the same perceptions. We cannot ignore the possibility that individual medicine will not be enough to also be a social medicine. The disease I like to call "worth" manipulates humans into making luxuries into necessities and needs too expensive.
I am learning that there isn't an audience that is looking for a cure but more an industry profiting from the lack of a critical perspective on genuine care of health. The insurance arena, the pharmaceutical arena, and the marketeers of this modern culture of care seem to saddle up the professionals and ride them, feed them just enough, groom them, and appease them so they can themselves escape the existential tragedy of simplicity. I don't understand the value in profiting from human fear of suffering or the actually suffering itself. I have hope in health but not from a business or professional perspective, but from my own change in perspective. Give to Lovelace what is Lovelace's and trust there is healing that will go beyond policies and coverages. The illness might be in what we find worth it because where I see money gravitating is in the bank accounts of a new form of unhealthy people who suffer from the disease I call "worth".
I find myself collecting hours of therapeutic moments. I am guilty of believing I care and then find myself contributing toxically.
