empathize with everyone I meet

My girlfriend said the other day, “thank you for being so understanding.” It’s a start, but being complimented by your girlfriend is just one step above being complimented by your mother!!

A friend suggested I write each day a little something about what I’m thinking when I’m empathizing with someone each day—what my thoughts are, what I’ve learned. I think it’s a pretty good idea.

I’m not sure how to measure progress for this goal, or what is a good endpoint at which point I can say the goal is completed. Perhaps if I can get a friend or two to say, “thanks Ron, I’m glad you understand.” If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know.

Well that one incident is now settled. I was multitasking while I was talking to her and didn’t see the warning signs. She thought I meant something I wasn’t saying. I need to be careful sometimes!

Not doing so great, at least with one person. I was giving some criticism to a friend and was caught by surprise when she suddenly blew up. I should have seen the signs much earlier…

Well, it’s not really that hard—it’s like jogging at an easy pace. Whenever I talk with people, I’m listening more carefully, not just at the words, but the body language. It feels good to be more attentive.

When I was a freshman in college, I had kind of a epiphany one night, the kind that changes you for the rest of your life. As part of that I wrote in my diary three goals for myself: 1) understand people, and, through understanding, you will love them 2) help people reach the goals they want to reach (and hope that, having reached their goals, they are made to want still greater and nobler ones) 3) be happy no matter what.

Well, it’s now been quite a while since then, and I no longer consciously think about these issues, though I feel I should (at least the first two). I find myself getting upset with people I don’t fully understand, and that’s a terrible sign. So like an overweight former swimsuit model, I’m wanting to return to form, get sweaty again, exercise the emotional part that’s been left to its own devices for too long.