Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Empathy, empatía, Empathie, 共情, сочувствие

This is a word that is know on every language but somehow, we lost the ability to understand it. I see Facebook and Instagram post about random acts of kindness, people leaving unusually large tips for wait staff at restaurants, police officers buying a child with a lemonade stand the shoes his trying to buy, but I feel that these are outliers.

Kindness has become, to many, a sign of weakness. I see it everyday in the most common places. Drivers won’t let other merge into traffic and if they let you they follow you and give you the one finger salute. People complain about another using coupons or having issues with their bank card in lines at grocery stores instead of being patient or offering assistance. All these little inconveniences have become giant problems, the “Karen’s” are the loudest complainers and almost always want to take their grievance to a manager even when to issue is an absolute nonissue.

I hate to give the previous guy any credit but his actions and disregard for anyone but himself gave the malicious masses the green light to be a hatful and bigoted. The very thought of being kind to someone because they were different, under the previous guy, was and current is considered WOKE… whatever the hell that means.

According to Websters Woke is the past tense of Wake.

Wake:  1.

emerge or cause to emerge from a state of sleep; stop sleeping.

“she woke up feeling better”

• become alert to or aware of.

“he needs to wake up to reality”

• cause (something) to stir or come to life.

“it wakes desire in others”

 I am still trying to figure out how this became a bad thing other than the ridiculous right have a completely different version of reality than everyone else.

I have Empathy so I suppose that makes me WOKE and I can live with that. I am still willing to help a stranger, buy a sandwich for someone that is hungry, in fact I paid for another’s groceries the other day because they didn’t have enough money on their card, the cart was filled with baby food and formula and I could let a baby go hungry. I was the woke guy in line that instead of complaining took action to help another. I can’t make others care and you can call me whatever you want but I hope that more people wake up and realize that we are all in the same boat and helping another is kindness, not weakness.