This story is not unique to me. I was working in a small restaurant near my apartment in Brooklyn last month before the metaphorical storm hit. We could feel the closure coming from a week away, even if the crowds didn’t dwindle until Saturday night. So it felt almost cathartic when it finally happened, and Governor Cuomo’s mandate made the decision for us. Or maybe it was the open wine we had to finish that night that felt cathartic. Either way, when my coworkers and I joined the legions of unemployed and ate our last family meal together, nursing hangovers, there was a fragile feeling in the air that was familial, surreal, and deeply kind.
Empathic Archetypes
A few months ago, I attended a panel discussion on "Applied Empathy" hosted by consulting firm Sub Rosa, which featured three speakers from a variety of disciplines. The specific theme of that evening was "Consumption" - an idea relevant to most fields, but impossible to ignore in mine. We consume food literally and in media, we consume resources to produce it, and we often consume the ideologies of the places we eat. The panel itself felt like a sincere exploration, and the panelists brought unique perspectives that complemented one another, but the idea I kept returning to (the same one that brought me to the event in the first place) was Applied Empathy in general.