empathy’s reflection

Bull's Eye. 🎯

You have squeezed a few best selling self help books into this minimalist gem Jack.

My biggest bane is seeing again and again in people the abandoning of the self.

I had to think for a moment about the second paragraph of your comment. I think I agree. Recently there was a woman on YouTube who performed a poem apologising for not having been Vladimir Putin’s mother. She was ripped to shreds for it by media voices, and understandably given that she was orienting the poem around herself, but there’s a legitimate idea in the concept of a poem about humanising a war criminal (as Putin allegedly is; I say allegedly because the big picture is complicated by so many factors to do with media). By humanising a monster you come to understand why he became a monster, when he started out as human, as all monsters do.

The poet was trying to reach that truth, and that was noble of her, but she didn’t understand herself and the reasons why she wanted to write and perform enough to reach it. She didn’t have an “I” to discard, so it ended up all over the poem.

Yes.