Monday, March 25, 2013

Empathetic empathy


Empathy is an ability, a skill.  Sympathy is an emotion.  That is the difference between the two.  Everyone knows what sympathy is; your girlfriend sees a dead cat by the side of the road and she cries, because a poor little kitty is dead.  Those with empathy might think of the fear the cat experienced while a vehicle was bearing down upon it, or the pain of the little girl who wonders where her kitty went.

Empathy is an ability, but it is also a curse.  It makes you experience emotions -- usually negative ones -- when you, personally, have no reason to feel badly.

It seems that empathy is my life skill.  I have this uncanny ability to put myself into others' shoes, even though I haven't experienced much, myself.  Sometimes, it's helpful -- I tend to be a pretty good judge of character, and I've been told I give very reasonable advice.  But I always smile when work clients tell me I have no idea what they're going through, because I have never experienced a severe drug addiction.  They're right, but also wrong.  That smile is a rueful one.

Sometimes, I wish I wasn't at all empathetic, that I could be like everyone else and have no consideration for other people's feelings.  I wish I could just flip that switch and focus on myself.  It's so much easier that way.  Those kind of people have no idea how lucky they are.

Instead I've consigned myself to work in human services forever.  I'll work long, extremely draining hours making a sub-par salary, in an attempt to improve lives because I feel for them.

Empathy is a shit skill to have.

/selfpity

Friday, March 22, 2013

Norman, my Norman.



This man fascinates me.  I mean, utterly, completely intrigues me.  And, believe it or not, it wasn't his good looks that caught my attention first.  It was his acting.


If you don’t know, Norman Reedus plays Daryl Dixon in the extremely popular AMC series, The Walking Dead.  Daryl is a redneck with incredibly developed survival skills, and a similarly talented, but far more malicious older brother, Merle.  Though I was hooked on the show after just two episodes, Norman didn't really catch my eye right away (he doesn't actually appear until episode 3).  In fact, I didn't even recognize him as the actor who played Murphy McManus in The Boondock Saints.  (Though, to be fair, TBS came out in the late nineties, and I hadn't seen it since it exploded all over my college campus back in my ungrad years.)  Daryl seemed, at first, to be every bit the asshole his brother was, and who likes an asshole?




But then, as the season went on, and Merle disappeared, Daryl’s character began to seem different.  It seemed like there might be a spark of humanity under the cruel façade Reedus portrayed so well.  It became clear that he was starting to care for some of the others in the group, however unwilling, and it was obvious that his distance was only a defense mechanism to protect himself.  He began putting effort into helping everyone, contributing and being useful.  As the first season slipped into the second, he began to seem more like a member of the group, rather than just a guy following the people with the supplies.


There was a defining moment for me, when my entire view of Daryl transformed.  **If you haven’t watched through season 2 yet, I’m about to reveal a spoiler.**  After the group discovers Sofia in the barn, Daryl regresses completely, maybe even overcompensating and becoming even more angry and withdrawn than he had previously.  After all the effort he put into searching for the girl, his already ragged and wounded ego couldn't handle the blow of losing her.  He put himself out there, and he got burned, just like he must have been, many times through his life.  That pain, and his harsh, abrupt reaction, left me in awe of the man behind the character.  Obviously, the writers have the main hand in producing the script, and the director sets up the scenes perfectly, but it was the phenomenal portrayal of Daryl’s reaction that has me so intrigued with Mr. Reedus.


Norman put an entire back story to Daryl’s character without ever putting it into words.  Such a feat is already incredibly impressive, but the fact that he was given a sort of free reign with the character, and he chose to take it in that direction -- and was ridiculously successful! -- blows my mind.


I've watched countless interviews, panels, and Q&A videos, and read dozens of articles and written interviews, and I only become more and more impressed.  I wish I could sit down with him and pick his brain.  I want to know his history, and the experiences that make him so humble and nice.  I want to know what made him who he is today, because it seems clear to me that so much of him is in Daryl’s character.


Like I said, fascinating!  And yes, I did use this as an excuse to post copious amounts of photos :)  Here's one more for the road!  Oh, captain, my captain!



Thursday, March 21, 2013

You don't have to be a Reedus fan...

To find this video absolutely hilarious.  Watch it!  Trust me!



See?  Told ya!