Archive for May, 2010:
Inspired by late spring
When I was a kid, I rarely interacted directly with nature.
I did catch grasshoppers in ball jars in the tall grasses of an empty lot across the street from my house, and I helped my grandparents find “nightcrawlers” (worms) in their backyard for fishing. But I hadn’t helped plant a garden until I was in my twenties.
Can we be “too compassionate?”
While I don’t believe we can be “too compassionate,” I do think sometimes imagining being in someone else’s shoes can become “too real.”
For some of us, empathizing with someone becomes so real that we take on another person’s energy, burdens, or even illness. We can even take on a society’s problems, to the point where we imagine they are ours alone to solve. Does this sound even vaguely familiar?
Walking in someone else’s shoes
Recently, I did a marathon.
No, not the 26.2 mile sort. Instead, I went on a TED marathon . . . as in getting mesmerized online for hours and hours by videos from the TED Conferences (Technology, Entertainment, and Design, though their motto of “Ideas Worth Spreading” says it better).