This morning I spent an unusual amount of time talking to some random guy at the gas station when I went to get my $1.69 pumpkin spice coffee and a 24oz hot cocoa to split between my youngens. Long story short, he was lonely, sad and hurt, watching a construction project he wanted to be working on but pride was in the way. One of his best friends and someone he had mentored was the foreman, and was treating people like crap. But that guy’s son just got thrown in jail for meth charges and somehow he’s suddenly got a houseful of kids that he’s responsible. So he’s sad and angry, too. The guy at the gas station desperately wanted a sign from above that he should go back to the work site. I told him he had it, and maybe this was an opportunity for him to go make up with his friend and help him feel better. I have no idea if he did or even would.
What’s the point of my story, you ask? Because empathy and because Love and Light. We all have a Light, and most of us hide it and hoard it because of people like that man at the gas station who just need people to see them, acknowledge them, and share their Light with them. But sometimes people get so hungry for Light that it’s uncomfortable to share. It’s all about namaste, and I don’t mean it in the yoga sense. I mean it in the sense that it means the light in me recognizes the light in you. We all need it. We all need to see it and we all need to share it.
I’m an empath, and for years it’s been easier for me to shield myself than feel everyone else’s feelings. For whatever reason, my walls were down this morning, so I was open and receptive and that man felt the need to talk to me. Like a moth to a flame he followed me to my van, talking off my ear. I don’t know if I helped. All I could think of was the whirlpool of longing within him, and that all I had might not be enough.
I kept thinking that he’s got a story and the asshole foreman has a story and we all have stories, but so often our walls are erected and we children of Light walk around blind to one another, judging one another on the basis of unimportant, trivial, and only visible factors. We forget that other people have depth and stories. We fail to recognize their Light. We create spiritual voids within our selves because we fear what happens when we share our Light. We need to stop doing that. It’s fine and wonderful to be a good person and do good things and be a helper, but if we aren’t sharing of ourselves, our Light, our actions are but a tiny ripple on the surface of a vast ocean.
What do you think? Do you keep up walls? What happens to you when they aren’t?
theincompetenthausfrau 
My walls are ALWAYS up. I have found that too many times I let people get close and they show me they do not deserve my kindness, concern or friendship. My profession as a Hairdresser kind of reinforces those walls, I take on the energy of others and it effects my mood. I am not one that things roll off of I absorb it. Your bad day becomes my bad day. My kids crappy mood alters mine. So I come off as cold, hard etc unless you are in my circle then you are spoiled rotten.
I think as a society we have lost empathy for others. We all say “it my problem” We don’t look at how a smile, a Hello or paying for the coffee of the person behind you does to brighten another persons day. We don’t live in a bubble I tell my kids, Your actions and inaction’s touch those around you and can cause a ripple effect.
I try to keep up some walls at work, because my job can be very difficult without those walls. Outside the office, life feels much less lonely and much more rewarding without those walls down.
It’s actually funny reading about this right now, because I had a bizarre encounter walking up to the coffee shop. A mom, dad and two kids were walking by me on the sidewalk as I parked. I got out and squinted in their direction, trying to sort out the right time to climb onto the sidewalk in the blinding sunlight.
The mom caught my eye and growled, “Mind your own business.” I was startled for a moment, and tempted to share some thoughts with her, before I figured she must have gotten unkind comments from strangers in the recent past. She doesn’t no me, so there’s no way her grumpiness originated with me.
Sad, though, that wall that went up so fast it left no room for so much as a smile.