The word EMPATHY we are told to take as the ability to identify with another’s feelings. This brings me somewhere near a person who puts himself or herself into the object he or she observes and lives the former while clinging on to the latter. To me, it is like someone swimming in a river hanging on tight by the branch of a tree arching over the running water. I find it awkward. There is a conflict between the observer and the observed. Hang on – we’ll come to it later!

For now, we take a look at people born with empathy or cognitively acquired it and allowed it to make inroads into their head. They are the people who are put in the front rank of good people, praised and admired living or gone, though a small number of people have begun to pick holes in this ABILITY.

Blessed or cursed (whichever way), what may be said with certain degree of certainty about these people is that they are soft minded, function under a delicate mind that easily melts at the object they observe.

This puts a question into my head.  Is this a type of head that some of us are thrust on their shoulder by birth and have no choice but to carry it to our grave or is it something to do with the shaping of one’s mind?  Where do we stop the buck?

I can’t answer it, for I’m neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist. The mind that is doing the thinking now while I’m working at this story is a cracked up thing that doesn’t remember it ever being robust in memory. If so, why on earth am I stirring this shit! Well, that’s because I, too, was put to the tyranny of this soft mind, not the head though, for I know human head is neither soft nor hard per se.  It is for this reason I want to say a word or two about it to share with fellow humans what it is to live out as an empath and what, if any, way to deal with it. I have no sympathy with this ability call empathy. I don’t have a good word for someone who inflict utter misery on oneself without being much good to the other. To me, it is downright foolishness to suffer without getting paid for it.

I have been like this, I mean, soft minded, from birth or I gained it as I grew, I cannot say for definite. Nothing can I unearth in my memory that could be of any help in answering it with authority. This doesn’t necessarily mean I have lost the ability to dig out things buried in my memory. I was born with what you might rightly call exceptional or extra-ordinary memory, call it blessed or cursed, that put me through a state of existence like nothing on earth.  Since it became more than I could bear I decided to go with “leave it and never bring it into innocent head” or be an agent for my own ruin. This exercise, without doubt, called for tremendous amount of inner discipline (inner power) on my part. It was like pitting a saint head against a wicked mind. The technique brought me a welcome relief but not without a cost. It cost me my memory. Forgetfulness crept into my head. That is probably because the mind was suddenly prevented from going its own way, so it started messing the head. It kept on switching over from one thing to the other after denied having its own way of going steadily deep in one thought. I feel like my memory fell victim to the tussle or tension which took place in my head and that it drilled holes in it reducing it to something akin to sieve.

Anyway, let me come back to the point what it is like to be an empath. I ransacked my memory for two episodes that I’d now dwell upon to paint a picture of an empath that I had the misfortune, so to say, of living out. They are about my brother and a grey cat. There may be hundreds of them buried deep down in memory. I am against bringing them back into memory.

To begin with the first episode in flashback which involved me and my brother, elder to me by three years. As growing-up boys we would get half-a-liter of milk every other day to drink with supper. When I say every other days it means if I get to drink milk today, he’d get it tomorrow, on alternate days. It was the routine. No hassle!

On that fateful day, it so happened that he stole his way into the kitchen and drained the pot of milk sitting on stove when everyone was out. It was my share of milk, rightfully mine, hence my privilege to drink it. Fair enough! How can I let go! How can someone commit an offense of stealing and walk free?  I can’t tolerate it. I must stop this thieving boy or else I lose my possessions to this kleptomaniac. He is an evil boy. If we don’t stop him now, tomorrow he’d steal cash and jewelry or any valuables he can lay his hand on!  Who knows tomorrow he grows up to become a dreadful criminal, cut throat of people, and rob them of their possessions!

Thoughts, dark and deep, flew in and out of my head in quick successions piling on my anger. They rankled with me. Before I could do anything about them, they blew my top. I flew off the handle, went at him furiously, and got into fisticuff, and rained blows and kicks on each other. He knocked me down and kicked. Blind with rage, I grabbed a brick from nearby field and smashed it into his head. That sent him down to his knee burying his bleeding head in both hands, screwing up his face.

Soon everyone arrived on the scene. He was taken to the medic. I was given a slap on the wrist and reproached for my action. My rage died down as quickly as it had boiled. With the evening meal I was given half a liter milk that I offered to my brother out of the surge of pity and affection. The gory sight of his broken head swathed in bandage had killed my appetite, sent my eyes swimming in tears. I pecked at food with my watery eyes on his blood-soaked bandage. We retired to bed after meal. My agonies were now to begin.

The sight of my brother who had fallen into peaceful slumber by now sleeping next to me gave me slew of agonizing thoughts traveling far and deep while I lay on my back in the bed. How excruciatingly painful was my savage attack! What could have been the impact of that lethal blow on him? What agonizing pain he must have endured when the brick punched a hole in his head?  What misery had this poor soul been put through? Why did I feel this sudden surge of stupid anger? What if the blow had proved fatal? How would have my parents taken me committing fratricide? How would this convicted murderer have spent his time in prison cell? Wouldn’t that have destroyed the family? What options would I have been left with other than hanging myself up by a ceiling?

A lot more dark thoughts than in memory had my wicked mind played in my innocent head. It took me a fortnight to come out of myself. I sat in gloomy silence with those dark, stubborn thoughts giving hell to my head and never going away. I had got caught in hell wriggling to get free. The mental torment that this little being suffered was something I hate to bring back into memory.

In the second episode it was this grey cat born elsewhere (beyond my knowledge) but trailed after the mother cat into my house when it was a just a kitten, a little cutie. In fact, they were two of them that the snow-white cat with aqua green eyes had brought with her. The black one suddenly vanished without a trace. I have no knowledge of his whereabouts. The mother cat would roam the neighboring houses and sneak into my house once or twice in a day. She wouldn’t live at my place.

The little kitties, black and grey, lived in the terrace and slept on top of the wooden box, the one that had my power inverter in it, until the day the black cat with glossy silken fur disappeared, just like that.  Now, the grey cat was alone, all by itself. He would get chicken head and claw for lunch and rice mixed with milk for supper. In the day time he is around, at night he is nowhere in sight. Come morning he is home.

That fateful day he was with me or around me the whole day chasing doves and sparrows. Just before dusk, I realized that he was nowhere near me. I switched him off. These quick and fast creatures pop in and out before you can blink. An hour later, just as I was buried in my computer, the agonizing wail came piercing into my ears. The poor cat came crawling up the staircase, dragging his badly mutilated body waist down which I later discovered to my horror that he was run over by a lorry. Wonder what life-force or energy left in him even after being knocked down and run over by the lorry to fight his way up the staircase of my double story house! He made it to the place I was sitting, crying in agony of pain, dragging his half-dead body around this corner and that corner, perhaps making his last ditch effort to escape into a safe place where pain and death can’t reach him. It was a heart-rending sight. My heart lurched. Fear flowed over me. Not knowing any better I grabbed him and gave him a cuddle passing my hand gently over his head. My affectionate gesture was far from easing his suffering. My eyes were already raining. I was at my wit’s end, utterly helpless. Something in me faintly whispered that I should put it out of misery. But the empath in me wouldn’t allow me to do so. There was nothing I could do except hoping against hope that he would come off it and become his usual self again. Finally, he climbed onto my bed after mammoth effort and fierce struggle, crawled into the hole beneath my headboard. He sat hunched in one corner with his face buried deep in his paws. He fell silent, moaning softly, his breathing irregular, though. I passed my hand gently over his furry back. There was no response. I didn’t want to disturb him for fear that it would put him back into the agony of pain.

I slumped down on my bed, sitting quiet, consumed with guilt of not being able to bring any help to him.  My head was already filled to capacity with his agony of pain. The image of this grey cat suffering terrible ordeal, crawling up the staircase with his badly mutilated body, the agonizing wail, desperately crawling this way and that way for a safe place to hide himself, ran before my eyes like fleeting scene from a film. I was overwhelmed by emotion. My eyes were raining. I felt a lump in my throat. I felt like I would break down any moment and start crying. I turned around to take a look at the cat, holding my breath. He was sitting in the same position, quiet, motionless. I gently passed my hand over him. He was gone, his body gone stiff like dead wood, turned cold. He was reduced to a carcass. I have no knowledge at what fraction of moment life slipped out of him. I broke down, wept inconsolably.

I wiped my tears, got to my feet, picked a plastic bag off kitchen rack, and gently moved the carcass from the hole into the bag, walked off. Fifteen minutes of walk down the road and I arrived at the bank of the Ganges.  I took his body out of the bag, held the carcass in hand, drew it close to my lips, kissed it, and then gently consigned his sacred body to the holy water, walked back home.

Thereafter, I suffered three weeks of mental torment. I don’t want to go into the state of suffering I was put through.

The lesson I learnt living out as an empath is that being an empath is a terrible thing. You live so much of pain, misery, agony, anguish and torment and get nothing in return for it. It is downright foolishness. It helps no body – neither the observer nor the observed. It is just a clever ploy of the sadist mind to play hell with your head.

To those living with this ability called empathy, my suggestion would be;

Put your body before your mind. Act and forget because you have miles to go before you sleep,

Let go of it and never bring it back into memory, give no space for evil mind to play game against your saint head,

Revive inner discipline which would eventually help open eyes to the vanity and futility of things,

Make a habit of keeping your mind where your body is and prevent it from wandering,

You are one and alone. That is the nature of the truth of existence. Let this nature prevail. Allow yourself to find comfort in oneness and loneliness. Never borrow a crutch to lean on. This will lead to pain,

Love a thing that is right before you. Don’t lament over a thing that is gone. Live in a moment and die in a moment. You don’t have yesterday and tomorrow.

Switch your mind off. Work, eat, f**k, and sleep peacefully and joyfully.

Life is simple and easy. Don’t complicate it!