Sensitivity

C and I received our COVID-19 Bivalent Vaccine Booster on Friday. It’s our fourth shot so far. As with all the others, I feel achy and tired and as if I have a mild flu, where it won’t affect C (I was wrong about this…C felt worse than I did yesterday!). I tend to feel things more acutely than many of my peers. My body resonates and interprets far more than many people. I think it is part of why I have such empathy.

For many years, I tried to dull my sensitivity to the world, through alcohol, through drugs, maybe even through sex. I don’t know. Perhaps sex was a way to share some of my sensitivity. This sensitivity, the natural ability I have to put myself into someone else’s shoes, has made me stand up to bullies, has made me protest, has prolonged relationships that should not have lasted. My sensitivity is both my greatest asset and, as is often the case, a very real detriment.

It is a detriment for two reasons. First, I often make decisions based on the group’s needs rather than my own because I care about the group. I can see how what I do affects the group. A group is my family, the development team I’m part of, or the neighbors and us. In some instances, this is wonderful. I think it is part of the reason why I am a good manager. It is why people like working for me. Decisions are made that benefit the collective whole, even if that short changes me; this is the way it should be. Yet, in romantic relationships, it can be horrendous because I either put my partner’s needs about my own or the relationship’s needs. The second reason being so sensitive is detrimental is this: who am I to assume I know what another person, another group feels? How very entitled and self-righteous!¹ So, I end up making decisions based on inconclusive or downright spurious data.

We can truly only know ourselves, and even that is hard to do at times. Yet, my empathy and sensitivity are something I wouldn’t ever want to give up. I am able to tap into this whole world of emotion and share in other people’s joys and sadnesses. When I see another happy soul, I rejoice with them, feel their happiness in my belly. My heart weeps when I hear the stories of those who have endured. I cry at poignant commercials, laugh loudly at funny movies, and don’t even get me started on books². Being able to touch raw emotion, to stay with it while it rolls through me, is a gift. I don’t shy away from hard things. I don’t retreat. There is power and confidence in being able to show and share in raw emotion, to connect with another human’s sorry and joy, to commiserate in their pain or celebrate their joy—and the whole range in between!

I will gladly accept the flu-like symptoms from my Covid shot if it means I experience the world and its inhabitants in all of the raw and beautiful emotions. I will continue to connect and hold gently the sacred in you. I only ask that you hold the sacred in me as gently as you can. The natural order is chaos. Some may even say cruelty. Humans have a choice. And I choose you and me.

Footnotes

1. My empathy also tends to disappear when it comes to large groups or movements that I disagree with, most notably the United States Republican Party. I promise, no politics here, but I cannot fathom why the Republicans fight the Democrats on policies that lift up the nation as a whole or why they unconstitutionally gerrymander districts—it truly goes against my ethos as a member of the human race. ↩

2. The Saturday morning I finished Where the Crawdads Sing, I spent bawling my eyes out in bed because I was so touched, so in tune with the main character. ↩