Empathy

Most of our snow has finally melted. The lawn looks rumpled and unkempt, like someone just awakened, hair in disarray. A doe is nibbling my barberry bush. I sit and watch her prune, partly because it’s a job I hate and partly because I know she must be very hungry; she has just survived a very long, hard winter. The problem with letting her continue her grazing is that the barberry is next to my garden, where peonies, iris, and lilies, now push through the wet, heavy soil in search of sun. How is she to know which plants she can and cannot eat? 

I debate whether to shoo her away, as I sit at my kitchen table trying to summon a metaphor for a story I am writing. It’s challenging to live side-by-side with something–or someone–whose values and needs are different from your own. Having empathy, I realize, requires more than understanding. Empathy may require sacrifice. 

I contemplate this as she continues to graze and I continue to search for a suitable metaphor.