Be careful where you wander ...

When I was younger, I had this thing I would do – you might call it an empathy exercise.  

I would put myself inside another person’s skin, trying to read deeply who they were and what lived behind their masks.  I’d watch them, following their gestures, reading their body language, listening to the tension or ease in their voices, imagining who I would be were I in their skin and how that differed from what I knew of them.  I’d take in their guarded and unguarded moments and try to understand where both came from.  

I would take their manias and passions and melt them in a calming pool and learn how things separated out and how they flowed when freed.  It was deep and intense and spiritual, and in the end, I genuinely believed that I grasped their essence in a better way.

It was also invasive, I admit.  It was soul or psyche voyeurism, and there were people I learned not to do it to.  People I was close to, I wouldn’t do it with.  I respected their right to explicitly define themselves to me. Especially family – that was too incestual for comfort.  Other than that, I practiced it a lot with other people, sometimes dabbling and sometimes diving in.  They appreciated the deep attention I was giving them, the serious listening, and resonating replies I was making.

One day after college, however, I was sitting in the office of my first boss.  She was complex.  She was brittle and insecure.  She was both kind and vindictive.  So, as I was waiting for her to finish a phone call so we could resume our discussion of … whatever I’d come in there for, I decided to delve.  I quieted myself, stilling my own internal noises, and letting her flow.  I listened; I watched; I felt.  I wrapped myself in how she presented herself, and what levers and pulleys were behind that presentation to the world.

And then I panicked.  I’d passed down through layers of artifice and convention, and literally crashed into a little girl who was scared and confused, and had been as far back as elementary school.  Here I was, staring at a naked pain that had started in her family and had been carried out into the world with her.  Both physically and psychically, I leapt back.  I told her I’d just remembered something at my desk, and to holler at me when she was done with her call, and I fled her office.

I felt assaulted and traumatized, and I hadn’t even seen the face of the monster she’d encountered.  At the same time, I felt I’d violated her myself.  On the plus side, I did understand better how to be more blunt and forthright with her, as well as how to do so more kindly, but that all came at a tangible, palpable, visceral price.

That was decades ago, and the last time I did that special empathic exercise.  I wouldn’t inflict it upon myself or another person.  Even now, if I catch myself wondering, I’ll remember and I’ll back away.  I don’t make eye contact like I used to.  I still make eye contact, just not as much.  Let’s just keep a little space here.  

I think there are others out there who have seen me in similar ways, maybe a handful of times.  I’ve caught the odd reaction as someone realizes something, right in the middle of a casual conversation – maybe a glance that causes us both to shudder.

Now, the only souls I’m willing to look into are those of my characters and personas.  Even then, I can be skittish about putting their souls down on paper or pixel.