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@adam_caudill

Empathy isn't blindness to harm, it isn't erasure of accountability, it isn't lack of judgment or discernment, it isn't forgiveness -- all things that are often wrongly conflated or mistaken for empathy, and so rejected as weakness.

Empathy is "I see you for who you are. And I recognize in you, the universe as it is, as I am. Though different, I recognize a shared feeling, and in this (moment) we are connected."

Empathy is a powerful moment of emotional human connection that should join and inform your intellectual understanding, not supplant it or be erased by it. This is where the ideal rare state of human wholeness, of thinking AND feeling at the same time is achieved or glimpsed.

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@adam_caudill

Empathy isn't blindness to harm, it isn't erasure of accountability, it isn't lack of judgment or discernment, it isn't forgiveness -- all things that are often wrongly conflated or mistaken for empathy, and so rejected as weakness.

Empathy is "I see you for who you are. And I recognize in you, the universe as it is, as I am. Though different, I recognize a shared feeling, and in this (moment) we are connected."

Empathy is a powerful moment of emotional human connection that should join and inform your intellectual understanding, not supplant it or be erased by it. This is where the ideal rare state of human wholeness, of thinking AND feeling at the same time is achieved or glimpsed.

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@appassionato @photography
Death is hard. Her face tied up in love and loss and suffering is familiar. It's my face at the loss of my cat, as a child. She lay dying in the ferns, and I stayed with her crying. When she took a breath and then no more, I wailed in abject grief. I remain grateful that my parents did not interfere or intervene, but let me be in my feelings, however hard it must have been for them. This is how we learn what is most essential about living, to love deeply enough to mourn. 💔

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@appassionato @photography
Death is hard. Her face tied up in love and loss and suffering is familiar. It's my face at the loss of my cat, as a child. She lay dying in the ferns, and I stayed with her crying. When she took a breath and then no more, I wailed in abject grief. I remain grateful that my parents did not interfere or intervene, but let me be in my feelings, however hard it must have been for them. This is how we learn what is most essential about living, to love deeply enough to mourn. 💔

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Dream last night: I am surrounded by sweet happy dogs who all want a boop. I am booping this nose and that nose, happy wiggling dogs all rushing up for a boop. I realize slipped in among the dogs are a porpoise, an alien, and a lizard, each happy and wiggly, all wanting a boop. I happily oblige. Boop!

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Dream last night: I am surrounded by sweet happy dogs who all want a boop. I am booping this nose and that nose, happy wiggling dogs all rushing up for a boop. I realize slipped in among the dogs are a porpoise, an alien, and a lizard, each happy and wiggly, all wanting a boop. I happily oblige. Boop!

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@StillIRise1963
My mother's life force was her fluid and complementary belief in Shintoism, Buddhism, and a loving Christianity, in the animating force in all things in the natural world. I grew up thanking stepping stones for carrying the weight of my steps, saying hello to the wind, the singing birds, and being gentle as I climbed the limbs of trees. You see yourself as part of a whole, the whole as part of you, and thus always embracing and always being embraced by the world. Say hello to Ursula for me.

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@StillIRise1963
My mother's life force was her fluid and complementary belief in Shintoism, Buddhism, and a loving Christianity, in the animating force in all things in the natural world. I grew up thanking stepping stones for carrying the weight of my steps, saying hello to the wind, the singing birds, and being gentle as I climbed the limbs of trees. You see yourself as part of a whole, the whole as part of you, and thus always embracing and always being embraced by the world. Say hello to Ursula for me.

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@RickiTarr

"If it was possible to live forever, would you want to?"

I've been thinking about this, your, question and the conditional responses it has elicited, including my own. It struck me that a lot of yes answers were, along the lines of, "but only if...I had the body I chose, the health I chose, the political or climate conditions I would like..." which really is a no. But isn't this what life is, a tomorrow or a millenia about which we do not have absolute certainty; and yet few of us would easily choose to say no to tomorrow. Perhaps my thoughts have been informed by my work with persons whose average age is 80 (even as I am old, myself), who often mourn their physical selves, who struggle with finding a place in a technological world they are no longer part of, who face the loss of loved ones. This is aging. We cannot be afraid of tomorrow, of life, if we are curious and open hearted despite our fears, if we realize each day we have existed proves we already have the strength to have survived years of unknown tomorrows we now call yesterdays. Living takes courage. And each of us already embodies that courage.

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@RickiTarr

"If it was possible to live forever, would you want to?"

I've been thinking about this, your, question and the conditional responses it has elicited, including my own. It struck me that a lot of yes answers were, along the lines of, "but only if...I had the body I chose, the health I chose, the political or climate conditions I would like..." which really is a no. But isn't this what life is, a tomorrow or a millenia about which we do not have absolute certainty; and yet few of us would easily choose to say no to tomorrow. Perhaps my thoughts have been informed by my work with persons whose average age is 80 (even as I am old, myself), who often mourn their physical selves, who struggle with finding a place in a technological world they are no longer part of, who face the loss of loved ones. This is aging. We cannot be afraid of tomorrow, of life, if we are curious and open hearted despite our fears, if we realize each day we have existed proves we already have the strength to have survived years of unknown tomorrows we now call yesterdays. Living takes courage. And each of us already embodies that courage.