Empathy

I find it strange that we can connect to people in a very quick and very deep way. In the length of an hour long TV show a character's hardship can move people to tears. Fictional characters, with fictional problems in a science fiction setting that may never come to be. A child lost, or a parent's sudden death, or a lover saying goodbye for the last time, these are real world losses that do not lose impact just because they are fictional. But what of a burden that does not exist, that has no real life analog. You're life long friend is a robot, you come back from the dead in a new young body, but give up the opportunity for a second life for the sake of the body, and because you promised a friend that you'd only occupy the body for a short time. Loss, loyalty, and selflessness, surly they are present in these fictional settings, but to understand that, and to cry because of the beauty and purity of these situations- is wondrous. An hour, less than that really, people can be moved to tears by things that never happened, maybe because they never happened. Sometimes I think people cry because the situation is impossibly good, and they realize life is not that way, and will never be that way. I've noticed that I don't cry at the sad parts in movies, when the hero dies, the pet gets lost, hearts are broken, that doesn't matter. But when enemies reconcile differences, or weep when their adversaries are defeated, or when good people rebuff irresistible corruption, or help a rival achieve their goals, that is when I cry, sometimes I even cry when people cry at other people's death as I find their respect and sense of loss to be impossibly good and proper and my inability to do so.

I don't view myself as normal, in fact crying makes me feel wonderful. To feel emotion makes me feel human, feel alive. I've lived life with a silver spoon in my mouth, I don't know what work feels like and I don't know hardship. Hunger and want for anything are so foreign to me they might as well be quantum physics. I've worked 16 hour days, I've gone more than 36 hours without eating, but always with a safety net of certainty that if I really wanted I could quit, or find something to eat. It's not that I had to work 16 hours, or that I had to go 36 hours without food, I choose to do those things and I feel that invalidates the experience. If you knew you couldn't fail, would back flipping off the empire state building and landing on a 3 foot by 3 foot landing pad be that exciting, or even an accomplishment? My friends tell me I think too much, I tend to believe them. I write this as if I'm the only person that feels this way, but it's way more common than I think, even though I think it must be a large amount of people.

I recommend "Dollhouse" to any science fiction fans who have not already seen it.