"Call and Response - Empathy in Corporation"

"You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: 'This is beautiful.'" 

Le Corbusier (see more here)

My years of working with the root concepts of empathy have lead me time and time again to issues of place. I'll spare you the inchoate details and cut to the chase.

If I attend to empathy as empathy has come to be enacted, then I walk a mile in your shoes and manage to think as you think.I have come to understand that concept as being way off the mark. To even assume that I understand your feelings (as you experience your feelings) is a kind of emotional colonialism. I can't occupy your emotions without impressing my life experiences on yours.

How could that even work?

What I can do is hold a space sacred so that perhaps you can experience your circumstances in safety. Why, that's a veritable cathedral of circumstance. The question du jour of the day becomes: do we make a space sacred? Is a space always already sacred and we find ourselves slow dancing in an empathic exchange? Is a space made sacred through our recognition of each other? Our recognition of the space as being intrinsically sacred?

I think about these things.

And the thought envelopes you. 
And it embraces me.

And this is beautiful.

"Consider this: Let’s say that the space you occupy is a Jello mold and that you and your circle of family and friends – your reality team – are banana slices suspended in lemon lime goodness. Now what transpires within each banana slice is implicitly akin to the Jello, and jiggles about as the Jello jiggles. And there is a certain simplicity about this."

Le Grandtoureau (video link here)

"From the dawn of man's imagination, place has enshrined the spirit; as soon as man stopped wandering and stood still and looked about him, he found a god in that place; and from then on, that was where the god abided and spoke from if ever he spoke."

Eudora Welty (complete text here)

 

While comprehending both the conveniences and pitfalls of a Cause and Effect existence, 

here at empathinc. we prefer to live in a Call and Response Universe. 

This series is an exploration of that space.