How many people actually pay attention, are truly aware of their surroundings, feeling other people’s joy, pain, wonder, and confusion?
How many notice the fragrance of nature’s growth or inhale the stench of human-made refuse;
assuming that ordure is all that there is?
How many well up with tears over a stranger’s sorrow,
smile with pleasure at the sight of a smiling dog or a laughing child;
not too self-absorbed to react viscerally to someone else’s emotion?
How many care about anyone other than themselves,
every other living thing in the world,
accepting the sentience of others unlike themselves?
Who among us worries as much for strangers
on the other side of the world, the other side of the tracks as we do for the things we want for ourselves?
Is empathy a lost art, a word with no longer any valid meaning,
has the reflective bubble in which we now exist replaced the faces behind us in the mirrors of our own egos?
Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 11 August 2017
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