B4Peace: A Tiger And His Boy Teach Empathy

This month’s Bloggers for Peace challenge is to work on empathy.

For this month’s challenge, I would like to work on empathy. Empathy is being able to step into the shoes of another and see things from their point of view. I challenge you to empathize with other bloggers this month

Are you kidding me? EBL is hardly the Empathy Bag Lady. How much do I have to suffer here? EBL and Empathy are rarely associated within the same continent, let alone blog. It’s like matter and anti-matter.

With that in mind I want to write about comics.

Say what now?

Well, it just so happens that I recently acquired a couple of treasures in a local charity shop. I love charity shops. I browse them whenever and wherever I can. There’s the little frisson of excitement when you go in, wondering what indescribable find you are about to make, the sense of being on the hunt, prowling like a mighty predator along the (slightly musty) shelves and bookcases. If I don’t find anything I learn patience, like the lioness. If I do find something I pounce like the cheetah, clutching my prize at the till where the kindly volunteer tries to work out how to count my change. Often I take back items bought a few months before and obtain a vicarious sense of achievement by de-cluttering and donating to a good cause. There simply is no down-side.

The treasures in question were a couple of collections of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, detailing the escapades of an imaginative but somewhat lonely boy and his stuffed tiger. Eldest Offspring has pretty much the complete set of books ever published but the wee scamp took them with him when he moved out and I really miss reading them. Admittedly this was about 10 years ago, Eldest Offspring being almost at retirement age already, but the pain has never entirely faded. Then I saw a couple of tattered copies casually chucked onto a shelf in the local Hospital League of Friends shop, and was transported, my dears, simply transported, back to a wonderful world.

Alright, EBL, you like comic strips. So what? How does this contribute meaningfully to a Bloggers for Peace post?

I am assuming anyone asking that question at this point has simply never read one of these jewels. In which case you need to be very ashamed and rectify your lack by going to the relevant website immediately.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes

See what I mean?

There are so many reasons I love these comics, but for the theme of empathy I suppose I would pick especially those wordless cartoons expressing a small child’s sense of wonder and excitement at being alive.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/08/18#mutable_988591

 

 

 

If we could all recapture that feeling of being in the moment, which characterises those long, sunny days of summer spent outside, doing crazy stuff just because, then the world would in fact be a better place.

While I was away recently, and after I drafted this post, I found out that Bad Things happened to Rarasaur. The bad things involve her being sent to prison unjustly, which you can read about in this post and the ones following it. It turns out I may have some empathy after all because I am still somewhat in shock having just caught up with events.

So I want to spread some #rawrlove through this month’s post about peace, being as Rara is one the best bloggers for peace (or of any kind of blogger in fact), being as she loves comics too, and being as her family need what support we can all give. A good way of doing that is taking a look at Dave’s Redbubble storefront, for example, and perhaps make a purchase.

Love knows no boundaries, it is all around us. Some days it may be harder to discern it, but have faith it is there.

Namaste.