This is a story about the first time I realized there was something wrong with the world. But at six years old, I didn’t blame the world.

I blamed me.

It never stood a chance… at least not in that environment. My little sister’s grip was too strong.

Something was terribly wrong. Its full body arched hard thrashing violently as its insides constricted tighter with each useless gasp…. The light from the moon reflecting off the ocean was creating sparkling flashes as its shiny wet body appeared, then disappear again and again…  Every cell in its being… with one desperate objective… fighting for its life.

They spoke in excited sound bites… whispering. No one had ever seen anything like this. Yet not one in the crowd seemed to notice the pain… the torture…, or at least if they did, they didn’t act like it.  Sharp bursts of knifing stabs, tingled throughout its body, this wouldn’t last much longer.

And then, it just stopped.

They stood there softly laughing and joking. They just stood there. They did nothing.

I burst into tears, helplessly forced to comprehend a basic truth I was not yet old enough to handle.

And then came the devastation… it ran through my body… overwhelming emptiness. 

I was an outsider looking in. I did not belong. What was wrong with me?

They just stood there. They did nothing. They could have done something to stop it but they still did nothing.

The revelation that humans were capable of such extreme cruelty … no apology… no remorse… was unbearable. And it was purposeful. This was no oversight, accident, or misunderstanding. I was positive. Had they not just witnessed the torture happening right in front of their very eyes? Did they just not care?

The laughing… was all I could hear. Cruel laughing cutting through the thick fog that covers the beach each summer at around the same time every night.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe they just hadn’t seen… I desperately clung, to the only hope left that could comfort me… the kind of hope that you know isn’t true, but just your minds way of making things somehow livable… 

As I slowly backed away through the thick sand, separating from the crowd …crying and sobbing… the pain of a lifetime of revelations swept over me. 

I was six years old.

Oh, look shouted a voice… she’s crying… more laughter… aww, that’s so cute… spoken in a disingenuous tone, only later I would learn was referred to as….  condescending. The laughter became louder with every step. I had no time to process. I needed time to understand this barbaric new found truth about people… one that applied, not only to strangers, but to the people I loved the most in the world.

If they are capable of this, what could they do to me?

My god, they are sick, I thought still unable to face the ultimate of truths.

I am utterly alone in this world. “What is wrong with me?” kept repeating in my head. I need to run away. Be alone… where I can somehow find a way to make this ok… a way to process what I had just witnessed.

I had to believe I was still safe. I’d still be protected.

I’d spend the time questioning myself. I’d find a flaw in my thinking. Something I’d missed. Something that would make me see that I had messed something up… that I was mistaken. Maybe I imagined it all. It was too much to bear.

She’s in charge of protecting me, right? How could my own mother… be capable of such blatant cruelty? How could my mother, my family, and all those other people just stand there and do nothing while it suffocated before our eyes? 

The “grunion run” is a unique Southern California phenomenon. During the summer months, small silver fish called grunions put on a spectacular show for quiet beach observers. On particular summer nights just after high tide, these animals can be seen coming out of the ocean and laying their eggs in the sand.

We were still and silent, watching in amazement as the fish crept up the sandy shore. A sudden voice broke the silence. The man leading our group announced that everyone under four could go closer and try to catch a fish. My little sister caught one on her first try. Two tiny hands gripped its flailing body. It died in her hands while everyone watched.

The next morning, I overheard my mom on the phone. I listened as she sat chatting, clearly amused, retelling the story from the night’s event.… “Kimmie cried when she saw the fish out of water… She’s so sensitive.” 

“Yeah, I know… Isn’t that adorable?”

I was humiliated for caring. What was wrong with me? 

For decades, I struggled to buy into our societal expectations. 

Suck it up, get over it, ignore it, show no weakness, beat everyone else, be the best no matter what it takes… 

My father once asked me how I’d make it in the world being such a “wallflower.” I wondered again, “What is wrong with me?”

Flash forward 5 decades… 

Today, most people will help individuals in an acute, emergency situation even if we don’t know them. At minimum, they’ll call 911 for them. We’re not cold-hearted monsters. We readily give support to close friends and family, too.

But from there, our altruism generally fades rapidly. If it doesn’t impact us personally… we generally stand aside and let other people suffer.  We do nothing.   

If it’s not happening to us, we don’t feel the pain. We are observing life from a distance, like it’s a movie. We see people suffering and in pain and for a fraction of a second, we might flinch, maybe even gasp… or shake our head. 

We have many excuses:

It’s happening to someone else.

We’re too busy to get involved.

We’ve never experienced it, so how do we really know if it’s even real? 

Maybe they did something that got them in that position. Maybe they deserve what they get. Maybe they made poor choices. I can’t save the world. 

We’ll make up excuses: It’s really none of our business anyway. We’re in a rush. We’re on a schedule. We should really mind our own business. We have enough problems of our own. Somebody else will help, how do we know what happened before the camera was on?

The gift of humanity is our ability to feel a strong emotion but not act upon them. We can thwart our fight or flight response. We have been gifted with critical thinking skills. We can feel something, and unlike animals, acting on instinct, we analyze and choose our response. We are able to learn vicariously, relating to the pain others are feeling despite us never having experienced what they endure. We can help them. Afterall, they are our fellow humans. We cannot just watch and do nothing.

We have empathy; the gift of being human. 

Today, our culture needs to hone in on this gift. We must value the ability to empathize with the plight of others. We need to value the ability to feel for situations that we have never and will never encounter ourselves. We need to fully utilize the gift of compassion instead of repressing it from our consciousness. The ability to empathize should be revered.

But our culture has taken a different path. 

Something changes when strangers or groups of strangers are in need. We distance ourselves. We close our compassion off.

We see sensitivity as weakness. We use the terms snowflake, wimp, wussy, crybaby, over sensitive. We frown on those that are too emotional. We tell them they will never amount to anything and they believe us. We look with pity at people who care deeply with all their heart about their fellow human beings. We call them P.C. We tell them they’re virtue signaling.

We tell them they just want to be a savior. They just want recognition and attention. We tell ourselves, there’s no way a stranger could really feel that way about others they don’t even know.

But strangers are but a handshake away from being friends.

There are few examples that show the depths of our lack of empathy towards people we don’t know than the ongoing crime against America we see in systemic racism. We all see it. Not a single “white” person raises their hand when asked how they’d like to be treated the way we treat Black people in the USA today. Yet, we just don’t have time for it. We’re busy trying to make ends meet at our own house. We are indoctrinated by our culture of “white” supremacy. We believe the propaganda that we are shown through media, family, school, community, etc. We don’t know our real racial history. It’s been “white” washed out of school curriculum. The Dunning-Kruger Effect has taken over and we don’t even question what’s missing. We don’t know just how much we don’t know. Indoctrination complete. We are now the proud perpetuator of systemic racism, by doing absolutely nothing to dismantle it.

I got lucky, I guess. I couldn’t or I wouldn’t become fully indoctrinated. I finally met others like me. I found others who understood. I was no longer alone. I found my people and became sure that nothing was wrong with me. I wasn’t crazy for caring. It was society who was crazy for not. It took me decades to figure it all out.

For me, feeling vicarious empathy for other living things started with a fish out of water.