I was reading an article recently that had an interesting twist and I thought I would share it with you.
Emma Doherty walked to her car in the parking lot of a children’s hospital and was greeted with the following note that was stuffed under her windshield.
“you lazy conning b-tch. You did not have a disabled person with you! These spaces are reserved for people who need them!!!”
Emma was outraged to read the message and she responded, in part, with a post on her Facebook page. With equal parts anger and protective parent, Emma responded with the following:
“to the person who put this on my car which I had put my disabled badge fully on show, I’m not angry at your pure ignorance, I’m actually upset with it. How dare you ever accuse anyone of not needing a disabled badge without knowing?”
Emma went on to lace into the insensitive clod who blindly made a judgment without knowing the facts. Some of Emma’s rage and parental pain was palpable and real. Emma went to on share that her beautiful son, Bobby, was terminally ill and had 15 operations, to date. Bobby had 3 open heart surgeries and many more surgeries on his stomach, lungs, and diaphragm. Bobby at the young age of 4 had two strokes, was paralyzed, and was brain damaged. Bobby also had a significant heart condition and spine and hip issues.
Emma went on in her post to inform the offensive busybody that she didn’t use a wheelchair that day to transport Bobby to the hospital. She was running late to one of Bobby’s medical appointments and simply did what all hero moms do—she carried him to the hospital after parking her car in the closest parking spot.
WOW! So much to unpack.
Empathy is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. I would elaborate (borrow from the internet) to state that empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what others feel, see things from their viewpoint, and imagine yourself in their place.
The depressing truth is that many of us don’t have the capacity and/or time to understand the pain or circumstances of others. How many of us are so wrapped up in our little, tiny worlds that we can only show concern with our own trivialities? How many of us are cocooned within our protected and soft lives and are oblivious to the pain and suffering of others? I think we know the pathetic answer to both questions.
Each of us has a unique and different story to tell and each of us has special and different life experiences. Some of our stories are magnificent and some aren’t so great. While many of us live in a comfortable standard of living and most of us can handle our problems at home and at work, some aren’t so fortunate.
The reality is many are quietly suffering with circumstances that are enormously challenging and those folks need great understanding and greater empathy, not ill-advised scorn, and derision. Emma and Bobby are one such living and breathing example of desperately needed empathy and it screams why we all need a crash course.
Going forward, before we are so quick to criticize others, we should spend some time trying to fully understand the circumstances of those we want to malign. Of course, it begs the question why some in our society feel so compelled to negatively weigh in on the plight or condition of others?
In the spirit of lessons learned, as we move along our merry lives and see the plight of others, maybe we could all be a little more understanding and ask ourselves what Emma and Bobby would want us to do?