"Empathy is rare, and it's the norm to not care about yourself."

New Classics Library

2024-05-27 07:30Posted on the official account of Beijing New Classics Library

A recent review that stood out from a reader of the just-released expanded edition of We Live in a Huge Gap:

"Empathy is rare, and it's the norm to not care about yourself."

After reading the first article in the book, "The Pain of Others Is My Pain", this reader was deeply touched by the delicate empathy and profound introspection in it, and such a quality is especially precious in today's "it is the norm to not care about yourself".

This article tells the story of Yu Hua's work experience when he was young, vaccinating the residents of the town. At that time, due to poor conditions, the needles could only be steamed and sterilized and then used repeatedly, and after a long time, barbs would be produced, and bloody flesh would be brought when pulled out. At first, when he gave the factory workers the injections, Yu Hua didn't care, because the workers all gritted their teeth and endured the pain. When the children in the kindergarten were injected, there was a lot of crying, which made Yu Hua "at a loss" and very guilty. After that, every day after work, he would use a whetstone to sharpen the barb of the needle, but after using it a few times, the barb appeared again, and he had to grind it again, and so on, until his fingers were white and blistered.

Recalling this past, Yu Hua asked herself: "Why can't I feel the pain of the workers before the children's cries?" He thought that if he prick himself before the injection and hook out his own flesh, he would feel the pain. This feeling is unforgettable for him and has been with him for many years. He felt that when he wrote about the pain of others, he also wrote about his own, "because the pain of others is also my pain."

After reading this article, we can better understand why Yu Hua was able to write such compassionate works as "Alive" and "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood". When he writes about suffering, he does not hold sympathy from above, nor does he display suffering as an element of curiosity in the story. He writes about suffering because he really feels the pain of the blessed nobles and Xu Sanguan.

Nowadays, more and more people are gradually losing the ability to empathize under the pressure of life. We are accustomed to confronting this increasingly cruel world with indifference, as if in this way we can avoid harm. But at the same time, we may also lose our soft hearts and sensitive antennae, and lose the ability to shed tears for others, even for ourselves.

Thankfully, Yu Hua's words can help us regain these abilities, so that the world does not degenerate into a horror story full of numbing NPCs.

Oh, and another day when a scribbled puppy saves the world.

In this issue: 

Yu Hua

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