While sitting in a local restaurant, I was gratified to observe someone pushing another person in a wheelchair over unpaved grass to watch a small child’s soccer game. The ability to extend to another person the kind of help we would like to receive ourselves because we can is part of what it means to be human. To have the capacity to “imagine” what it must feel like to be a parent or grandparent and not be able to navigate the distance from the paved parking lot to the sidelines to watch a cherished child play soccer is the very essence of EMPATHY.

Contrast that scenario with the report that our former Commander in Chief, DJT not only asked that “no wounded soldiers” be included in a July Fourth Parade when he was in office because it “wouldn’t look good.” The showman, not the statesman was definitely in charge that day.

How does one human being develop the capacity to show empathy while another never seems to understand that “beauty is not always about physical appearance.” The development of a person who has little capacity to understand that other people feel pain but who can only focus on his/her own needs is the definition of a NARCISIST. The early psychoanalylist, Freud hypothesized that when a child never develops an ego, a sense of who he is in the world, that person is left to function with their ID. The ID is the part of a baby that causes the baby to cry as if it’s heart is broken when waiting for a bottle or feeling the discomfort of a wet diaper.

Later, when the child is a toddler the inability to control or “wait” for even a minute results in the “tantrums” of the terrible twos.

Fortunately, humans can develop beyond these ID states and with time and patience develop the EGO and then a SUPER EGO which is really where, according to Freud, the CONSCIENCE resides. Obviously, if the individual remains in the ID, never establishes a sense of EGO (self) and has no SUPER EGO; THERE IS NO CONSCIENCE OR SENSE OF GUILT FOR ANY BEHAVIOR. The Narcisist is free to act or speak in any way they choose because the “feeling of the moment” is all that matters.

In adulthood, the telling of a “convenient lie” or the crossing of personal space to, you know, “grab them” does not ring any alarm bells for a person with no Conscience. I think, I have made my point.

So when you next see an individual who is struggling with a disability regardless of the reason; consider your own response. Do you feel empathy? Do you hurry to hold the door open for the wheelchair or walker.? If so, then you have the wonderful, God-given quality that Jesus taught us of EMPATHY and that’s a good thing to have. Amen.