The Male Empath (Altruism)

Let's pick up right where we left off. 

First of all I got a lot of positive reactions about my last post in this series so thank you a lot for that, I hope as I continue exploring personal Empathy you'll find the stories interesting and informative.

Here's how Altruism is defined in the dictionary: disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.

The reason I bring up altruism because since a very young age a lot of people have said that I'm "Too nice." or that I let people walk over me. I'll give a quick example of this before I try to disentangle the thought process that lead me to my decision

I was having a party at my house and there was this girl there that I had a major crush on. The girl showed up to the party with a date. A few hours into the party they wanted a place to be "Alone" so I told them they can use my bedroom (Which is uncommon for me, my bed has seen more action from other people than myself). Of course my roommate was watching all of this and his jaw dropped, he said "Dude don't you have a crush on that girl? You literally just gave her and this strange dude a bed."  "Yeah, I also gave them a condom, what's your point?"

Now from his point of view, I just let a random dude into my house and then offered him the bed where I lay my head to have sex with a girl I liked. He really thought that I was just the biggest coward in the world. To some others it seemed like I just wanted the girl to be happy even with someone else... awwwwww. Well they were both wrong! Here's why I did it

I'm an Empath( I know I said it like a billion times but that doesn't make it less true). The way I analyse,interpret or experience social situations is completely different than most people. Let me explain that night from my perspective:

A - I had known the girl for years by that point, which means if something were to happen between us something would've happened. She's my friend and I shouldn't be crushing on her to begin with so that's on me.

B - I knew how she felt about me,she didn't like me that way. And on that specific night she already had a date. Which means even if she did like me and I told her that I did, what is she gonna just ditch her date and throw herself in my arms? that's just unrealistic and I know she won't do that.

C - I could feel that they were both.... let's say "Excited" , and its not like I was going to use that room anyways. 

So unlike what people think about Empaths, that we put people ahead of ourselves even though it harms us, we actually just analyse the situation and see what is the best reaction at that time. The reaction that'll create the least amount of negative feelings. So in that situation if I had said "No you can't use my room, go get your own." I would've Disappointed my friend, Hurt her, Confused the guy and had two very sexually frustrated guests. So the social maths in my head of me being a bit Hurt Vs. Hurting two people made sense to me, letting them have the room caused me the least amount of pain and so I did it. 

The reason I'm telling you this, is because I want to dispel the rumour that Empaths just let people walk over them just because we don't want to hurt anyone. That's profoundly wrong, we do it because in a lot of situations when you're hurt there's no need to hurt the one that hurt you, you're only putting more hurt in the world. Because I do strongly believe that we create our own world. Our world is a collection of actions, observations, feelings and memories. Everything you do is an action observed by others, an action which creates a feeling and leaves a memory. Everything everyone does creates the world even if just in an infinitesimally microscopic way. So why create more negative emotions? On which I'll pick up anyways.

In conclusion, I prefer to take the highway not because I'm selfless If you know me you'll know that I'm a stubborn condescending narcissistic bastard. But I do it because If someone hurt me and I yell at them and make them feel worse, I'll feel that bad feeling that I just made them feel, plus the hurt they have caused me. So in a way my (What seems) Selfless actions to people are actually just me doing what I like to call (Emotional Maths). Just calculating how to navigate the situation with minimum people feeling bad so I don't pick up on those bad feelings.

Please don't take advantage of this info and ask me to help you move or something, not because I won't help you, I will! But remember I'm tiny and frail, carrying things is not my forte. I'd prefer to help you with a translation job or something.

Thank you again for reading this entry. Next entry will be a much longer one since I'll be talking what it's like to date as an Empath, especially that one time I dated a Sociopath. That was insane! But you have to wait till next week to hear all about it.

Today I feel: Overwhelmed about an upcoming show. Excited about a friend coming back to visit. Angry by some turmoil I'm having with a close friend. Anxious about monetary issues. Happy to be helping out a friend. Curious about the lucrativeness of a new project. Disturbed by some social behaviour I witnessed recently.

See you next time when I tell how it is a nightmare to date me....         

The Male Empath (A very real mythical creature)

If one more girl says to me "I feel like the guy in the relationship." I might murder someone! Actually I won't because hurting them will hurt me and unfortunately I'm not a masochist I'm an Empath.

A few weeks ago I was reading a wonderful book called "Confessions of a Sociopath." by E.M Thomas. A fantastic insight into the brain of a Sociopath who thought that Sociopaths are very misunderstood. And just like she thought that, I felt that Empaths are very misunderstood as well. And yes I did use the word "Thought" for her and "Felt" for my elf purposely.

It's really hard to explain what occurs inside the brain of an Empath, I tried to find research on the topic to present it in this blog series but there is so shamefully little out there. Hell, Google spell check doesn't even recognise the word Empath as a word... you have no idea how annoying it is to see that little squiggly red line under a word that perfectly describes who you are.

I guess I'll take you back to as far back as I can remember so I can give you a bit of an insight. Now pardon my English as it is not my first language so if there's a grammar mistake here or there, kindly smile and move on. Also pardon my pop-culture references as I am a nerd and I can't better express myself.

I was watching X-men First Class the other day and there was this one scene where young Charles Xavier says "I thought the voices were in my head first, then I realised that they're in everybody else's head.... I thought I was the only one out there." When I watched that scene I had a flashback to when I was 5 and my Mother came back home with my little brother wrapped in a tiny little baby blanket. He looked so ugly. I remember feeling Proud, Angry, Happy, Overwhelmed, Scared, Guilty, Bored, Uninterested, Anxious, Tired, Relieved and Unfaltering. Yes I actually felt all of that altogether.

I didn't even know the word for most of those feelings, they were so raw! I'll never forget that day, somehow I felt them altogether and individual. My heartbeat was moving up and down from emotion to emotion, I honestly felt that my heart decided that each emotion has a specific rate.If I have to visualise it. My heart was the drummer from Avenged Sevenfold and each emotion was a specific drum and my heart went "I fell like playing the drum solo from 'Beast and the Harlot'". After my heart settled down a bit and it was bed time, I asked my older brother (Who is a Sociopath by the way, but we'll get back to that in later entries) "How are you feeling?" and he said "Uninterested" when he said that word I felt like "Wait a moment, I had that feeling."

Then I asked my mother how she felt; she did find it odd that a 5 year old is asking that, but I really was curious. She said "Happy" but that's not what I felt around her, I felt a feeling I later learned to be called "Overwhelmed". When she said "Happy" and I didn't feel it around her I knew that something was off there. But I was five I couldn't quite put my hands on it. So I started probing further. I asked my father how he's feeling and he said "Proud" when he said proud I started trying to find the right frequency in my heart for that feeling.

I remember that experience like a scene from the show Sherlock. The BBC one with Benedict Cumberbatch. His thoughts floating in front of his head and he's trying to match them. When it's a wrong thought he just shakes his head and it goes away. That's how I felt. I tried to look for frequencies in my heart that matched the word "Proud" and then I got it! I assigned the word "Proud" to a specific feeling. I don't even know how I got that this feeling is pride, it just 'felt' right. Then I started going around asking every member in the family how they felt, luckily and unfortunately at the same time I had a HUGE family. 5 boys, 2 girls.

What really fascinated me is the way they answered, the boys would say "Happy" or "Sad" or "Tired" But the girls would say "I'm happy, but it's going to be a little tiring with the new baby." or "I feel good about the new baby, but I feel a bit overwhelmed because I have exams and the baby would be loud." I couldn't relate to the how the boys' were feeling at all, I remember wondering "How can you feel just one thing?" the girls' feelings ,however, I could understand a bit more. It was always two-three feelings at a time. But still I had about 9-10 feelings minimum... all the time I had that. And I still do.
 
Many people think I'm gay, and I'm completely okay with that. What I find absolutely reprehensible is a society where only women or gay people are allowed to have complex feelings. What most people think Empaths do is just pick up on other people's emotions and act based on emotions or be irrationally overemotional. The way it really is goes like this: here's a stream of consciousness from yesterday in a room full of friends that I wrote down, I'm gonna use letters for people's names to protect the privacy of people involved.

"Oh I'm late I hope B doesn't mind, oh look most people are late too that's cool. oh here's M I like being around her, she's always chill.... yup she's chill today too oh and she's excited about the upcoming vacation, oh but she's also a bit disappointed in the weather. oh B is here, daym that dude is stressed, not as stressed as last time though, I better set up and do my part to make him feel more relaxed. hahahaha look at J he's having the time of his life right there, that is so fun. Oh hi N, always nice to have another Empath around. Ok C easy easy... you're way too excited buddy, I like that but let me set up I'll be right with you. Oh C2 if only you try to have fun, common man you're here.... might as well."

I could go on and on but I think the thought process of "He is nervous so I'll do something to calm him down." Is the most rational process imaginable. so Empaths are not irrational at all. We just feel so many things all the time.

 Remember that scene in "HP and The Order Of The Phoenix"  where Hermoine goes "Don't you understand how she must be feeling? Well obviously she's feeling "Sad" about Cedric and therefor "Confused" about liking Harry and "Guilty" about kissing him. "Conflicted" because Umbridge is rushing to sack her mom from her job at the ministry and "Frightened" of failing her O.W.Ls because she's so busy "Worrying" about everything else." And then Ron says "One person couldn't feel all that, they'd explode!" Well basically I feel like that all the time... All the god forsaken time!

 I'll end by saying that you'll never know true misery until you look at someone's eyes, feel their sadness and know in your heart that you can't do anything about it, it's truly soul crushing. But we wake up, we put on a smile and we try to make people feel better, because when they do we do.   

I don't want to make the post too long so I'll add one more thing and stop, before I do that, I'll be posting one every week about how it's like to face the world as a male Empath and all the perils it brings.

 As a fun extra I'll add how I'm feeling at the end of every post just to give you an insight about how we feel everyday, again I'll try to keep personal details out of the words to protect people involved

I feel "Overwhelmed" with my family and "Depressed" because my father has been severely ill, "Stressed" about an upcoming show and about monetary issues,"Shocked" about a very odd encounter I had last Friday, "Confused" about an ill defined relationship, "Hurt" because of something about a friend said, "Happy" that the summer is here, "Proud" to work with a production for charity, "Excited" about upcoming boat parties and "Conflicted" about feelings I have for someone.

So there you go, if you can relate or have something to add please say so in the comments section, I'll try to write every Wednesday. Next week I'll write about how empathy relates Altruism and the week after that (yes I'm giving a teaser) I'll write about how my empathy related to me becoming an Atheist.     

The Fall of Faith

Everyone is unique! That's what we're fed since we're born. And it's not necessarily wrong. Yes every person has their own way in the world, but there are some of us who are divided from others by understanding. There is a certain sadness that engulfs those who comprehend how the world works, or how the universe work.


I don't mean understanding law or economics or politics.I’m talking about those who look at flower and understand why it blooms, they look at the human eye and know how it sees. They know why the stars sparkle and why a muscle twitches. Those who have seen the building blocks beyond the Ding an sich.

The ones who have chosen to unveil the mystery of the universe and look at it nude almost erotically. There's a beautiful sadness among them.

Those who know that there is no magic, there are no miracles, there is no order to the universe. For us the beauty of things fades into grey. But there's beauty in that greyness itself. The mechanics of life start to click in your ears as you walk down the street and you feel the cogs hitting one another in perfect harmony. When you smile or you lend a hand to a friend, you don't lend that hand in hope of a reward from a higher power. You lend that hand because there's something innately inside of you that pushes you to be good, to be beautiful, and then beauty befalls you. Grey beauty. Melancholically poetic and poetically melancholic. Sadly to the outside observer only the greyness is seen and the beauty fades to black.

" Your father has cancer in his lungs and bladder, " Said the doctor inapporpriately laconically "He'll need a miracle to survive."

" A miracle, Doc there is no such thing."

My old man had always been a fairly simple dad. Nothing really special about him, he had a job, he put food on the table, he watched news in the evening and reprimanded us when we had bad grades. He did use to, when he had time which was not often, tell me a lot of stories.

He told me epic tales of brave men like Robin Hood and Ali Baba and his thieves. He told me stories about Muhammed and his super powers, about Aladdin and his magic lamp and about Cinderella and that bitch of a stepmother she had.

Admittedly I did enjoy the stories. What can I say? I was three years old and I let my imagination run wild. I used to imagine that I was flying next to Aladdin on his magic carpet. Or that I was in the middle of the desert and then Muhammad came and made a cloud float over me and then made water appear out of his hand. And then we would go and find infidels together... Wasn't really sure what those were in the first place but they were his archenemies.

I loved all these stories equally, they all were magical and yet I believed that they were all true. I truly believed that we lived in a magical world. Maybe some part of me wanted to believe because the alternative is just too dull.

One day when I was 4 my dad wanted me to go with him to this place called a 'Mosque' "A lot of my friends are gonna be there, you should come I'm sure they'll love you". That's odd, I thought to myself, I didn't really think of dad as having friends. To me he wasn’t a person like me, he was this mysterious figure that appeared in my life every now and again and gave me food. When we walked in the mosque it was packed! I quickly noticed that it was all men and that the place smelled like cigarettes and old socks. I sat down next to my father and then this random man started to tell the same stories my dad told me. Except he was only talking about Muhammad and this character called 'Allah'.

Allah immediately became my favorite fictional character. He was like the genie but he gives unlimited wishes. “ If you ask Allah for something sincerely, there's nothing he can't do.” The man said. When I heard that I honestly thought  "Even the genie had rules... This is awesome."

I tried to ask questions but my dad shushed me. Then when the man was finished talking everybody stood up and my dad told me to mimic him. When I asked why, he shushed me again. I don't remember my father shushing me before, it was very strange. After I finished mimicking my dad, which looked to me a lot like the exercises my family members do everyday, I was walking out of the mosque and I asked my dad if I can ask him questions. He said of course the more merrier.

When I asked him why were we doing this 'Sala' exercise, he said that it’s what Allah told Muhammad to tell us to do and that if we do it and ask Allah for things he will give them to us. "Wait wait.... We know where Allah's lamp is? And we can ask him for wishes? Why didn't we do it when mommy broke her knee last month? She was really sad."

" No son, no one knows where Allah is, he lives in heaven and he's the ruler of the universe."

" So like the genie but hiding?"

" NO! Allah is real. Those other stories are just...... " My heart fell to stomach for a minute. Somehow I knew what my father was about to say next and it send chills down my spine "Fairy tales." He said. I was so relieved, I thought he was going to say the were lies.

" What are ‘Fairy tales’?"

" They are stories we come up with to challenge our imagination son. But Allah is real, and he's all powerful and all good."

" So how many stories are real and how many are fairy tales?"

" They're all fairytales, except the ones about Muhammad."

I didn't ask any further questions that day, not because I didn't have any, but because I was just so sad and confused. How come only that specific story is real and not the others? If people can ask wishes from Allah how come so many people were so sad and not like Aladdin who won the princess and danced with elephants?

As I grew older and started learning more and more what a fairy tale is and what religion is, I just couldn't shake the feeling that those religious stories seemed like the ultimate fairy tales. The magic, the characters, the plot..... It seemed perfectly fantastical. But everyone around me seemed to believe it. I started wondering if everybody thinks the story was real. Then  I remembered that Muhammed used to battle infidels. The problem was everytime I asked questions I got the same answer 'Because Allah willed so.' I got in trouble in school when I answered all the test questions with 'Because Allah willed so.' Which was unfair because everyone taught me that was why things happened.

I remember my dad was drinking coffee and splashes of it were on his thick black and white mustache. "Did Muhammed kill all the infidels?" My dad almost did a spit take when I asked that. "No," he answered "There are still a lot of them alive today."

" Wow! How many? Where are they? Are they the 'America' with the the bad TV shows that as you said ‘tries to poison the youth of Islam?’ "

" They're everywhere son, and they're always trying to steal our land and attack Muslims."

" So are they bad? Should I hate them? Are they all gonna burn in hell?"

" We can't say who's going to hell and who's not. But Allah did teach us that those who do not believe in him will be severely punished and burned."

" So how many of them are there?"

" About 6 billion."

The second he said 6 billion I started crying immediately. I cried and cried over all these people that will burn forever. But I was also crying for myself, what if I had died before my dad told me that this one about Muhammed was the only fairy tale that wasn't a fairy tale. And that if you thought it was you will burn forever. I didn't understand forever but it seemed like it's a long time to be in fire.

And then there was the moment I knew that even those who really believed in fairy tales still felt somewhere deep within that it was just a tale. My grandmother was on her deathbed and I was ecstatic for her. Finally she gets to go to heaven and live with unlimited wishes. But then I looked at my mom and I saw her tears. Which made no sense to me, why do you want her to stay here in pain rather than going to heaven and living her real and eternal life?

She was acting as if she's never seeing her mother again. He's not going to a better place, he’s just going. Her life, her real life, her only life, was about to end.

And today I stood in front of my father as he took his last breath. My mom crying on his side, my sisters crying on the other one. And I heard him say the last thing he ever said. "I'll see you all in heaven." My mom wailed when he took his last breath, her wail just assured me that there's something deep within her, inside her very being that knew.. She knew in her heart of hearts that fairy tales are just what they are... Fairy tales.

I laid a hand on his shoulder and I whispered to myself " No you won't man. But thanks for the stories."