You Can Imagine

I don't remember. 

It's like I wasn't there. 

Scars on my body, and other people's memories, tell me that it happened. 

If I don't have the memory, though, how am I any different from someone who tries their best to imagine something they didn't experience? 

Okay, yes, I know what you'll say: "It's different - you are different - because you were there. It did happen; to you." 

But, can I really say I understand something that I don't remember experiencing? Am I affected by it, or not?

We place so much importance on memory and experience, but even if you've shared the same experience as someone else, each person has their own thought process and way of processing the same experience.

I'm not saying that mutual experience isn't unique and important - knowing that someone has gone through the same thing as you have can be very comforting and valuable. 

Nor am I saying that someone who has not gone through the same thing can understand exactly how you feel.

There is something, though, that gets a bad reputation, and it has always bothered me. Even more so now, when it's all I'm left with. Two things, actually. 

Imagination and empathy.

It doesn't make sense when people say:

"You can't imagine it." 

That's the wonderful thing about imagination: there is no "can't." 

No limit.

With imagination, you always can. 

It's what I can do. I imagine.

Our brains - how amazing are they? A universe in every skull. Ever learning, increasing in ability, and never full. One of the most amazing abilities our human brains have, that makes them unique compared to animal brains, and anything else in the physical universe, is the very thing we insult and diminish: imagination. 

What if (yes, I'm asking you to imagine) people around you everyday didn't imagine? 

Every thought, toward themselves and others, was based only on what they personally experienced. 

Your memories and experiences are yours, but what if no one even tried to put it themselves in your shoes? No thought to how that experience might have been. What an even colder world that would be.

Empathy, closely related to imagination, isn't based on having experienced what the other person went through. It's about recognizing the emotion of the person, and being moved to feel it inside yourself. 

Sadness, joy, pain, excitement, confusion. 

There's a reason a laugh is contagious. You don't even need to know the joke. 

Empathy kicks in. 

It's how we're made. 

It's how we're meant to be. 

It's how we should be. 

It's how we need to be. 

These things that get treated as insignificant and even negative are two of the very things that make us human. 

The more we cultivate them, in the right way, the better humans we'll be.