THE GRAVITY OF EMPATHY

One day the wind was blowing so hard in Manhattan that I seriously believed my five foot body would be picked up and carried in the air like a hot air balloon. I could feel the force of gravity fighting with every human being that I passed and every street sign and every car. The trash that Manhattan accrues on the street didn't stand a chance - pieces of paper and half smoked cigarettes and paper cups flattened by cars were all passing me like daytime strobe lights.

I could tell that something was going to happen that would make me sad, because it was a moment when nature and I were fighting each other...  this time, I lost.

Every morning for the past year, I'd bought an apple from the same fruit seller - Kahled from Afghanistan. Kahled's dark, leather-like skin and deep set brown eyes, made his sulfur color smile stand out, and he greeted me every day with it kindly.

In a single moment, Kahled's entire fruit stand toppled to the ground. My heart broke. 

Hundreds of apples, oranges, grapes, plums, and peaches rolled through the street in every direction. Kahled looked around - he didn't know which way to go. So his feet just stayed planted on the concrete sidewalk as he watched his fortune roll away.

I began to run to collect fruit. It wasn't a reaction I processed in my mind or really even thought about. It was a reflex to pain.

As I grabbed my armful and headed toward the stand, I began to notice that I wasn't alone. Everyone around me was staggering to collect fruit. Three men in grey suits. Five women in black high heals. The bum on the street with the sweat pants with holes in them. The tourists. The delivery men. The mom and daughter. The dad and daughter. The barista who stepped out for a cigarette.

It was as if for a moment the gravity of empathy was more powerful than gravity itself.

And I thought, what if empathy came as naturally as keeping our own two feet on the ground? 

Gravity or gravitational forces are really just forces of attraction. Kind of like the attraction that exists when you can't pull yourself away from a certain human because you really like him or her and can't explain it. Except in this case, it's the Earth pulling on you and keeping you on the ground. The pull is gravity at work. 

Every object in the universe that has any mass at all has a gravitational pull or force on another object. The size of the pull depends on the mass of the objects. 

What if the weight of a person's situation was weighed in mass? What if we were so moved by human pain that we were drawn to acts of kindness?

Maybe those rare moments are signs of a force that we don't even know exists... one where mass is determined by the amount of human need and gravity exists as empathy.