Revealed! The State Governor collapsed as he laboured out of his car on his return to the expansive leafy Government House, throwing the place into pandemonium.
“Doctor, Doctor,” his aides yelled as the 70-year-old UK-trained doctor stumbled out of his car to save the life of his boss.
“Fast to the Federal Medical Centre,” he shouted at the driver after checking the Governor’s pulse, after the ADC assisted in laying the Governor carefully in the back seat. There was no ambulance around for the Governor fondly called The Strongman.
As they scurried off, the aides wondered what must have happened. For over an hour the Governor delivered a thunderous speech that held his audience spellbound. Never before had the Governor spoken so passionately about poverty in the state and distress from months of unpaid salaries and pension.
“Most of you know my background; I have tasted poverty so I know it,” he had said, sending the mini-stadium into a grave yard silence. The people were confused about how to react to that.
But he had planned the speech carefully. “Never again will I see my people suffer poverty, lack of medical care and poor education,” he had continued. “The opposition who say I am heartless should wait for this: today marks the end of mass poverty in the state because I have been touched by the death of Peter Sonka, a teacher who died last week because he had no money to go to the hospital. By the end of the month, all salary arrears will be paid in full, and every poor family will be paid some stipend for a better life.”
The stadium roared with joy.
The following day, news leaked that the Governor had collapsed from exhaustion after approximately 65 minutes of pretending to be a human being with empathy.
“In all my years of practicing medicine, I have never met a leader as healthy and vigorous as the Governor,” a doctor was reported to have said. “But the sustained effort of simulating compassion proved too much for someone who had never exercised that part of his brain for empathy before.”
“If you have never spent a moment thinking about a human being besides yourself, imagine trying to pretend you are doing that for a solid 65 minutes,” the doctor was reported to have explained. “It’s physically punishing.”
A brain scan showed that his brush with human feelings, which he hadn’t done for years caused severe strain in the part of his brain that evokes empathy – it was a kind of overload. This is an adaptation of a satire on President Trump by Andy Borowitz, a New York Times best-selling author, after the President’s State of the Union Address last week.
If Trump is said to lack empathy, many leaders in Nigeria are perhaps worse. While some state governors live in disgusting opulence, eat choice food and drink expensive wine, build mansions with the peoples’ money, some 13 states owe their workers unpaid salaries. How does a poor teacher who has not been paid for 12 months survive? Yet the governors are able to sleep soundly, without an iota of guilt and talk down on their people. What happened to empathy?
What happened to empathy when leaders are busy stockpiling money and building mansions instead of building people.
What happened to empathy in an era of widespread kidnappings and ritual murders and killing of innocent people?
Where is empathy where many people are out to take advantage of others? What happened to the culture of being our brother’s keeper? Some people say if some Nigerians are written into the story of the Good Samaritan as the fourth man who saw the man robbed and in pains by the roadside, they would take what was left of the victim and push him down the slope.
Empathy
Empathy, a fine human nature, is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective; placing one’s self in their shoes to feel what they are feeling. Empathy is known to increase prosocial (helping) behaviour. It is clear from current circumstances that even some of our leaders lack empathy, so what do we expect from people down the line?
Yet many studies have shown that empathy, caring for other, is mutually beneficial. According to Dr Joseph Mercola, empathy has the following features:
•Empathy has complex neurological underpinnings that control the way our brains help us to care about other people.
•Humans have “mirror neurons” that react to others’ emotions and reproduce them; a deficit in mirror neuron receptors has been suggested as an explanation for narcissism and neurotic behaviors.
•Empathy training has been found to reduce stress levels among medical students facing intense emotional encounters with patients. While many parents try to instill empathetic qualities in their children, there’s growing research that empathy has deep neurological roots in humans.
Why it is Beneficial to Practice Empathy
According to scientists, beyond stress relief, it is important to be empathetic for the following reasons: People who practice it:
Are more likely to treat the people they care about the way they wish to be treated.
Understand the unspoken parts of communication with others.
Are able to more accurately predict the actions and reactions of people they interact with.
Experience the world in higher resolution as you perceive through not only your perspective but the perspectives of those around you.
Better understand the needs of people around them and better understand understand the needs of customers or colleagues at work.
Will find it easier to deal with the negativity of others if they can better understand their motivations and fears.
Have less trouble dealing with interpersonal conflict both at home and at work.
Have less trouble dealing with interpersonal conflict both at home and at work.
Will more effectively convince others of their point of view.
Are less likely to be wicked or lose their humanity.