The Secret Ingredient of Every Change

Mr. Charles Person mentioned that these movements that we learn about all seek to forge alliances with people from all other backgrounds. There is no logical method to reliably recruit people, especially those from opposing stances. The freedom rider population consisted of 50% white members, and they were not there because they a saw a scatterplot or histogram of the data behind boycotts. Graphs do serve their own purpose; however, I observe that a tally of the march across the Edmund Pettus bridge would not matter to a passing reader if they had no initial awareness of what a march is.

Conveyed in every book, statistic, brick, and scar is a story. A graph needs to have the foundation of a story it is measuring, and a memorial needs plaques to illustrate the transgressions that were recorded within its creative designs. As we collect stories—engraving their history in a different medium, memory—we are gathering an abundant resource that can never be contained or intentionally exchanged. It is a resource that already is carried by young infants, and it is a resource that can soften the hard-hearted.

Empathy.

Walking amongst the National Memorial for Peace & Justice, weaving between countless standing, laying, or hanging coffin-like boxes, I did not feel any sense of loss. Neither did I carry an initial sense of hate for their oppressors. Without empathy, I was completely empty, staring at rusting frames hollow both figuratively and literally. But in assuming the smallest shred of empathy, I felt a piercing rage, tinted with vengeance, striking my collar bone. I tasted a sinking heat of sorrow crawling down my chest. I was encompassed with the peace of realization that people in this world care. All these feelings resulted from empathy—which is not an emotion, but a function of life. Love, as an unconditional expression of God, is instantaneously harnessed in the context of one person to the other, truly understanding what the other has been through. Without listening and observing in empathy, T.M. Garret would never have made his complete 180. Without forgiving and nurturing through empathy, Carolyn Maull McKinstry could not have made such great strides towards reconciliation. Without empathy, we cannot envision together a new, repaired world.

Jon Sison

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