You Dont Know How I Feel

24 Dec 2006 – As usual Sunday Christmas service is packed and this year is special as the new church building is ready for use. Christmas service ends and the congregation floods out of the service halls towards the ground floor for the usual weekend gossips and catching up with people. I decided to take the stairs from the 6th floor as the lift area seemed crowded. As I was going down the stairs, I was horrified and outraged to see this moron LIMPING down the stairs with one of his legs in a cast! His girlfriend is helping him down the stairs and filling up the rest of the walking space creating a jam in the stairwell as well. WORSE, there were 2 female idiots behind them commenting how CARING she was and how BRAVE he is to take the stairs instead of the lift. If not for the fact that its Christmas and I was feeling uncharacteristically charitable, that ‘Dumb and Dumber’ couple and their equally mentally challenged sidekicks would have gotten a dose of good old Hokkien expletives, guaranteed to cure all foolishness and ignorance.

You dont know how I feel.

How many times have we said or heard this all-so-familiar phrase? How proudly individuals claim to experience some encounter so profoundly unique they have exclusive rights to; that only they alone have undergone an (often tragic) event and absolutely nobody else can empathise. If only its true.

In the mere 50000 years that modern humans have existed, we have collectively exhausted practically every encounter there is to experience. As the human race advances, encounters that were originally unique have become common place. Below are 2 such examples.

29 May 1953 – Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. More people have been on top of the world ever since.

21 July 1969 – Neil Alden Armstrong’s first moonwalk. More than a dozen men have since trodden on the moon only to discover in their disappointment that its not made of cosmic cheese.

Well fortunately humans, well most humans anyway, are born with the gift to empathise. When others share their innermost thoughts and experiences, most of us are able to form a mental image based on our understanding. This may not be infallible but its reasonably safe to assume that if we care to share, we can impart our knowledge and experiences to others. By simply doing so, we collectively, as a civilisation, have been able benefit from the past to create a better future. In reality, the only true unique experience one could selfishly enjoy would be our death.

The next time some major catastrophe emotional trauma strikes or the entire universe has unjustly accused you of some misdeeds or you stumble upon ‘Encounters of the Moronic Kind’, do not hesitate to allow your fellow humans to exercise their empathic ability.

Because by telling me ‘No point in telling you, you dont know how I feel.’, then truly ‘You dont know how I feel.’