The image of Aylan Kurdi, of a forlorn three year old boy alone on a beach, flat down on his face as sea water lapped over and around him, appeared to wake the conscience of millions. We were confronted with ourselves, our weakness spoke through our tears and the isolation we saw in him drew us together in communal huddles. We felt. And in feeling we felt ourselves too, we felt for a moment what it meant to be human, to be small and weak, but our humanity extended beyond the exterior. We also looked within and humanity and empathy coalesced. By empathising we humanised our own existence since the boy we saw could have been one of ours, it could have been us in a metaphoric and symbolic sense lying face down, alone and ‘washed ashore’. In humanising Aylan we came to learn that being empathetic is being human.
January 4, 2019
