(Ir)religiosity

If you have been to Rob Bell’s Drops Like Stars tour then you know that at an important point in his “talk” persons write “I know how you feel” on an index card (with their non-dominant hand!) and exchange the cards with someone else in the room who has undergone the same experience (divorce, affected by cancer, etc.).

At one point I exchanged cards with a person sitting next to me — who may or may not have been under the influence — and his card, instead of reading what it was supposed to, said “I know you feel.”  I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but I have been reflecting on that difference between the two statements for several weeks now and I’ve come to the conclusion that that the latter, that is the one with the “typo,” is truer than than the former, the statement we inevitably default to when empathizing with those who are suffering or hurting.

In fact, the more I think about how radically different each of us is and how strikingly dissimilar our seemingly similar experiences are given the intricacies and peculiarities of our own subjectivity, the more I realize how arrogant and rash it would be to tell someone that I know how they feel.  Even if I have shared an experience that we might for the sake of convenience call “similar,” or even “the same,” I simply cannot understand nor comprehend how that experience may have altered or radically augmented the other’s narrative in ways strikingly different from my own.  My subjectivity and the other’s subjectivity are wholly other to one another.  Even our shared and similar experiences different; we experience the same experiences differently, so differently that I would say we are precluded from state that we know how the other feels.  Such would be to collapse the other into myself, relegating the other into the order of the same.  I think this is devoid of true empathy and compassion because it still places my experience and my subjectivity above that of the other.  I experience another as an object, not a subject.

The closest we can come, by contrast, to truly identifying with the other in our (un)shared experience is by declaring: I know you feel.  This seems superficially axiomatic but I think one would be hard pressed to find normal instances in which the deeply heterogeneous ways in which we experience trauma and suffering are actually validated rather than simply recognized and shoved aside.  Moreover, I find it very powerful that while I can identify with the other on a certain level through various shared experiences I can never know the full depth and breadth of her subjectivity, indeed that is precisely what it means to experience the other qua other.  I do know empathize with the other, despite our shared experience, because I know exactly how that experience relates to the other’s subjectivity or because I know “how” that experience makes the other feel.  Compassion and empathy couched in that way is, at its core, narcissistic.  I know the other feels (not how!) and I identify with the other despite the mystery that is her complete subjectivity and despite my desire to project myself onto the other. This is, I believe, what it means to “be with” those who are hurting and those who are suffering, not because we have actually been in their shoes — because we haven’t and to say we have would be damaging — but because we are woven together in the fabric of humanity and we encounter one another face to face despite the enigmas the separate us.  We stand together and hold together our shared experiences whilst realizing we understand those experiences and their effects quite differently, that is what it means to relate to one another and see one another and respect one another as other.

I don’t know how you feel but I do know that you feel despite what the world around you may say.