Being Empathetic Was My Biggest Weakness

It was just another day when I looked outside my window and saw the usual. The bustling street, people rushing to work, and an air of stress surrounding the crowd like the 8 am fog in winter. But today, this air seemed to wrap around my thoughts as well.

I was going through one of my lowest phases of life when every strength in me felt like weakness, every little thing felt like insecurity and every action of mine felt stupid.

I was going down the spiral of negative thinking as I thought to myself, "I have nothing about me that's particularly good. " I have always been empathetic towards people, strangers even, and in that moment I realised how it is called 'compassion' in strengths and 'sensitive', 'emotional' and 'soft' in weaknesses. 

It was almost like the street metaphorically represented the thoughts in my head. Unsettled; looking for the right direction to reach their destination. And all my thoughts that collided with each other always ended up reaching the very old, the very same destination. 

Writing.

Every time I felt a thought, a feeling, an emotion overtake my mind, I would quickly grab my phone and pull out the notes app to write gibberish for hours until my thoughts would settle and all the questions would finally find an answer. These questions have never been answered by the internet as well as they have been by 'introspect' and 'retrospect.' 

And so? What was the introspective answer that hours of gibberish writing gave me?

It's all about perspective. Perspective is difficult to change but impossible, nah!

We can always work through our thoughts and find a way to look at life, look at our challenges and our situations differently. It's the way we 'frame' the thoughts in our head as 'words' that can totally shift our mindset, our opinion and our perspective. 

We could have a perspective that everyone who lies is wrong. We could believe that everyone who lies isn't wrong because it's life and we could also believe that sometimes it's okay, maybe because that was the best thing to do in that situation. It all depends on the lens through which we look at life and the aperture this lens is adjusted to. 

So one could go about life complaining that everything is unfair, everyone is unfair, while the other could look at the wide angle in the situation, be grateful and feel hopeful for what's yet to come. 

Coming to the negative thought that bothered me, that even something as beautiful as 'empathy' can be a weakness. Again, perspective! What is empathy? It is the ability to be able to feel someone's emotions.

There are so many people who can't even feel their own emotions and go about life living like robots. You on the other hand can feel not only yours, but also someone else's emotions and that's so special. 

Being empathetic doesn't mean you're weak. If you can feel someone's pain, you can feel someone's happiness and that's beautiful. It's like the rest of the world is merely existing, while you on the other hand are living life in HD.

It is always so easy to go down the spiral of negative thoughts and hate everything around you, everything about yourself. But then, you can always shift your perspective. Be your own best friend. Talk to yourself, treat yourself right, pamper yourself and love yourself like you would do for your best friend. 

Increase the aperture of your lens. Allow more light to enter as you look at life from a wide angle, a higher perspective. Trust me, you will see how tiny your problem is in the large scheme of things called life.