Listen if you prefer:
Last night our kids were watching Planet Earth while Eric finished making dinner and I wrapped up some work.
When I walked by, baby sea turtles – just hatched – were making a harrowing journey from their eggs to the ocean, dodging all forms of danger, birds to cars.
I carried on with my frenzied activities, the girls’ eyes glued to our screen-time babysitter.
I took the opportunity to jump in the shower and put on my pajamas, ready to unwind with our family.
As I towel-dried my hair, Eric called, “Dinner’s ready!”
At that moment, Clara came into our room and fell into my legs, wrapping her arms around my hips in a heavy lean, her sadness passing into my body through mother-daughter osmosis.
This happens whenever my girls have big feelings. Plus I have my period.
“What’s the matter sweetheart?” I asked bending down to hug her.
“The turtles died,” she sniveled.
“Oh honey. Did they get eaten by a crab or a bird?”
I was ready to get all circle-of-life and that’s-how-other-animals-survive with her. But Clara knows this. She has watched hyenas scavenge every bit of an impala after lions took the choice cuts – close enough to hear the bones crunching as they excavated the marrow. To smell the fetid-sweet odor of carcass. Witnessing this planet-earth moment in the flesh (and bone), her eyes bulged and she leaned out of the Landcruiser as I held her close.
She didn’t cry then.
This was different somehow.
She broke open.
“They got run over by cars!” she sobbed.
I held her. I held it together. Whatever it is. Her little tender body shook in my arms and I said something like, “I know. I know. I love you. You have such a big heart. I know.”
And I did know. Body-knowing. Bones and heart knowing. Intercostal wisdom. What she spoke about was not ok. It was unnatural.
And still it happened. It was-is.
She calmed and we sat down to eat. Caramelized tofu, green beans, rice.
Partway through the meal, I watched her eyes turn glassy again.
In that moment, I – and it – fell apart. Turtle tears seeped out of my eyes, too, as if tracing the animals’ slow-moving striving against the machine of urban sprawl. Refugees with nowhere to go but through. My tears flowed into some manhole that leads to a bottomless sea of sadness.
With me crying, Clara now shed two-ton-Leatherback-sea-turtle tears. All from her little big-hearted body.
I am sometimes afraid she’s maladapted for this world. Even though I know she can’t be.
Like all children who haven’t yet had it socialized or squeezed out of them through early trauma, Clara still manifests full-bodied love and empathy that knows no bounds.
True maladaptation, I believe, is the numbness that comes with living in the real messy world. It’s the tough shell we build and reinforce to protect ourselves.
I found a softshell turtle down by the creek that ran near my home when I was eight. Or seven. Or eleven. It doesn’t matter. It was the size of my palm, cream colored, and had a little Pinocchio nose, and although its body was shaped like a turtle, its shell was malleable like the tender fontanel on a newborn baby’s head where the skull hasn’t yet fully formed.
On my own daughters, I found that space disconcerting and fascinating. When they were infants, I lightly stroked this spot, tracing its keyhole contours, marveling at how fragile they seemed.
How can an entire creature live as a fontanel, I wonder now.
But back when I found the turtle, I didn’t wonder about that. In my childhood – a comfortable one full of what I want for children everywhere - love and nature and friends and security and joy – it felt obvious to me that living with this vulnerability was perfectly fine. Right even.
These days a lot of people are throwing out an Elon Musk quote: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
The unbecoming side of me thinks it’s totally appropriate for Musk to be sound-bite-click-bait-X-ified. But that’s not how I want to be.
As with all things taken out of context, it sounds really bad. I knew there must be more to this story, so I put on my big girl pants and turned to wonder the way I do when I’m in the generous place and space from which I want to operate.
How, I wondered, could anyone see empathy as a weakness when I see it as a superpower? (And, also, why attribute it specifically to Western civilization? But anyhow…)
I did some sleuthing and snoping (as in snopes.com) to get the backstory.
I read the transcript from that portion of Musk’s Joe Rogan interview (I haven’t yet convinced myself to listen to the whole thing, but I will try).
Indeed, what Musk said was more nuanced. In addition to the horrifying quote above, Musk also said, “And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.”
So I read more about what Musk meant by “civilizational suicide.” He was referring to the work of Gad Saad about “suicidal empathy.”
Here’s my understanding of Saad’s (sad) theory: When we feel or care too much about others, it causes us to lose objectivity and analytical capacity. This in turn invokes some moral relativism where we sacrifice our own freedoms and wellbeing in a way that’s bad for us as individuals and, ultimately, deadly for our civilization.
The thing is, Saad’s suicidal empathy is an empathy imposter — feeling FOR or ABOUT another rather than WITH. It’s a paternalistic, pity-filled notion rather than true empathy.
There’s a difference that’s not just semantic.
In Musk’s defense, when this about-for empathy imposter shows up, things can get really bad. It’s true. I have seen DEI efforts go off the rails for the reasons he and Saad highlight. For caring ABOUT or FOR others rather than caring WITH. I have been part of several such efforts.
When I look at times I have merely cared about or felt for others, I know I was reinforcing my shell in a charade — a facade — of being the kind of human I want to look like rather than the human I am — you are — we are.
It was performative empathy devoid of Desmond Tutu’s wisdom:
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
I believe true empathy is essential and existential to humans and our planet. I actually believe empathy is what makes us fully human. Like opposable thumbs but way better. Empathy is our sixth sense.
I believe our work here on earth is to embody (and, where necessary excavate and rediscover and recommit to) the empathic marrow in our bones.
Feeling with others does not lead to civilizational suicide, but rather flourishing.
And, I want to raise the bar on Desmond Tutu’s empathy. I think it’s it’s not quite big enough because it focuses just on humans. I believe our collective humanity is caught up with other people, yes. Absolutely. And also with the baby sea turtles on their way to the ocean. And with their tender softshell brethren.
So me? I’ll hold my softshell daughter close and push to keep open and reopen the fontanel over my heart.
❤️, B
Oh, I can relate to the mother-daughter osmosis. Loved this piece!