Playing on the edge of understanding

An amount. How much of something. A little, a lot or somewhere in between. It's all relative. To what you know and have become used to. It could be anything. Suffering, pleasure, possessions, time, money, distance, volume, size and so on.

Comparisons are easy to make. I can quite easily look at what you have done or got and compare that to what I have done or have. "Comparison is the thief of joy" (Eleanor Roosevelt) is a favourite quote. Not much good comes from comparisons but it is pretty common to make them. Maybe that's because comparison is grounded in something shared, something we have or want. That could be experience, a conceptual framework or material objects.

More often than not when I've heard empathy being discussed it's framed from the perspective of empathising with another's suffering. Their misfortune, bad luck, ill health or some other negative experience. Not sure why that is. Is not sharing someone else's joy or commending their success the same thing? The closest I can find to this is the Buddhist practice of Mudita. "...sympathetic, empathetic, unselfish, appreciative, altruistic, or boundless joy – it is joy in the good fortune of others."

It's a bit of a stretch for me to imagine, to conceptualise the experience of something that's sits way outside my sphere of experience. Mental heuristics only go so far. My frame of reference falls short. I see the horror show that is news about Gaza, Ukraine and such like to what effect? I feel angry and sad about it. I cannot though imagine what it feels like to wake up and live that experience every day.

The line is bad. I can't hear you. I end the call. I might try again. The quality of the connection seems outside of my control. My attention moves elsewhere. A marked difference in experience is perhaps a bit like this.

I started writing this to share what often happens when speaking about long distance bike rides. The conversation often does not go much beyond the initial wow response. It could be down to my own conversational skills. I'm no raconteur but neither am I socially inept. It's occurred to me that most who ask, "so how far did you ride?" simply cannot imagine do anything similar so struggle with finding any common source of reference to continue the conversation. These dead end conversations pale into insignificance given the prior examples, however the principle seems the same.

So what can we do differently? How can we respond to something beyond that which we can relate to. Start by acknowledging the limits of our understanding. Be curious, be interested, listen with an open heart, and where it's needed let compassion inform our actions.