Utilizing Sympathy and Empathy in Historical Analysis
Part Two
I
suggest we employ these lessons and techniques from the study of history to
personal development and spiritual growth.
As we learn to forgive people, an appreciation of the vivid circumstances
and hard facts in which they made choices that harmed us may help us to
sympathize and even empathize with them.
An easier and less difficult assessment makes uninformed judgments of
the actions of the people who have harmed you.
Immediately, we condemn them for hurting us and being insensitive to our
feelings and pain. Yet, if we exchange
places with them, would we choose differently?
Are we better able to defeat our self-centered fears and self-seeking
motives? Do we possess a steadfast and
formidable character whereby we are able to choose morally and ethically
correct actions despite the hard variables in any situation? Isn’t it less painful emotionally and
spiritually to digress to moral pragmatism and utilitarianism in which we assure
ourselves that we seek the best outcome for the most people using favorable and
practical means? In contrast, do we not
possess the same moral cowardice and constitutional incapacities that we
observe in others?
Consider
a specific example. Approximately
forty-five years ago, a grandmother faced a critical decision relating to seven
of her grandchildren. They had been
abandoned by their mother in the middle of a winter’s afternoon. The mother left under the pretext of running
an errand at a neighborhood store. She
never returned to her family. Instead,
she left to live with a common law husband with whom she carried on a
relationship for the next thirty-eight years.
Her husband and the father of the seven children arrived home that night
after a long day of work to discover that his wife and their mother had left
them. An abusive alcoholic, he knew he
could not rear his seven children.
He
summoned his mother-in-law to the inner city public housing complex where they
lived. She assisted him and transporting
the children to a Southern state where both sets of grandparents resided. The father asked his mother-in-law to assume
custody of his children and her grandchildren considering the fact that her
oldest daughter and child had abandoned them. The maternal grandmother said “No” in response
to this request which probably was made as a conditional arrangement until the
father could return to assume custody and care of his children. Parenthetically, he never did. In fact, he proceeded to acquire a common law
wife with whom he would have two other children in addition yet another son
with a third woman. Nevertheless, the
maternal grandmother straightforwardly refused to assume custody of the seven
grandchildren notwithstanding the fact of her daughter abruptly abandoning and
leaving them helpless.
Before
rushing to judge the grandmother for her indifference to her grandchildren,
pause and consider the very hard facts and context in which her decision was
made. Her husband was an active
alcoholic who was not a professional man but the equivalent of a day laborer or
tenant farmer in a rural Southern town.
They had late adolescent children who still needed a lot of resources
and care as they had not yet graduated from high school which was the requirement
for civil service and other jobs at the time.
Plus, they had already assumed custody of a niece and nephew meaning
there were four teenagers in their household.
Even with public assistance such as food stamps and supplemental
security income, it would have been very hard to provide food, clothing,
transportation and other necessities for thirteen people not to mention the
lack of healthcare, entertainment and adequate living space.
If
you are a parent of just one child, you can imagine how hard it would be to say
“Yes” to the father’s request whether temporary or permanent. Without any of the advantages or
opportunities of middle strata and formally educated American citizens, how do
you double the size of your household and provide sufficiently for
everyone? Honestly, would you have been
able to say “Yes?” Further, reflect on
the possibility of extensive mental, emotional and psychological damage to the
seven grandchildren had their maternal grandmother said “Yes” but eventually
was unable to fulfill the obligations.
As wards of the state and rotating within foster care, they would have
been prime candidates for criminal activity and other types of deviant
behavior. Notwithstanding her clear
alternative to the contrary, arguably the maternal grandmother made the correct
choice.
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