Buried Treasures

     There is buried treasure in my house.  It lies in cardboard boxes and plastic bags deep within the basement, deposited there when I moved in nearly 20 years ago and layered over with newer boxes and bags.  The contents of these containers vary, sometimes notes or photographs, sometimes old letters or artifacts from my childhood- the kinds of things you don't just throw away.  As a collection, it's nowhere near complete.  There was more than enough chaos in my life before I came to rest here to ensure that pieces were lost along the way.  You may not be able to throw these sacred relics away, but you have to be prepared to accept that they will drift out of reach of their own accord.  And I have been prepared for that fact of life for some time now.  Long ago, I had resolved myself to the loss of my daughter's baby picture, the one taken at the hospital when she was only hours old.  It was only a thing, just a paper image of a much tinier version of the person who was still in my life in a very real way.  No sense mourning the object too long.

     An offhand excavation a short while ago uncovered a pleasant surprise.  There it was, her baby picture, tucked in a stack of photos from my exchange student summer along with another dozen or so from those early married years.  I suppose I never thought to look for it among the high school photos.  There were leaps between the eras, a  kind of quickening of changes, events and catastrophes that had set them as distinctly different periods in my mind.

     So, welcome home, baby.

     I spent the evening looking through the stack of mixed photos as I tried to play a distracted game of Scrabble with my husband.  Each photo was a connection to another time and place, and each brought a dusty web of emotions with it into the light of my current life.  So much has changed, but with every one, there was also recognition of what hasn't changed.  The experience was more than just sparking the conscious memories- we lived in that house, my hair was that style, this or that relative was so young.  It was a deeper link, as if I had unearthed those moments to live them again.

     That's the powerful human mind for you.  Simple lines and colours come into your eye, and Bang, you're in another world.  I guess this is part of the reason why the loss of the photo had not overly distressed me.  It wouldn't take much to evoke that moment or that image.  As humans, we are able to link to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were our own.  Thus, every picture of a newborn is connected to your own.  Every wedding or graduation ceremony is attached to others you have witnessed.  Every pain or failure is linked to every other you have known.  Your mind fills in the pieces, pulls up your memories and emotions and builds an experience of it all.

     There is a reason for it.  We are designed to identify with our fellow humans because empathy helps us survive as a species.  We're social animals, and social animals take care of each other.  Empathy helps us care for each other.

     Writers (and other artists) can make use of this phenomenon, and by doing that, cultivate the empathy that helps them connect with their audience.  We share the ideas and images that relate to our audience, common experiences that hold so much more power because the reader can identify.  They take in the sketch we render, add their own experiences and are transported.  While this mechanic may be working for you as an artist, making your work more real and reaching your audience by hitching a ride on their own memories, it is also benefitting the reader.  Consciously, they can see that a character experiences similar things, and it helps them to think about their own responses or ideas about the subject.  Unconsciously, exercising their ability to identify with others improves emotional health and relationships.

     The next time you find yourself looking at a friend's pictures, attending a celebration, or reading a passage that moves you, take a moment to reflect on your reactions.  What unconscious connections are you making?  Does identifying in this way deepen the experience for you?  The more you practice empathy, the better your writing will become and the richer your life will be.