Joe was out walking the morning after his wife had given birth to their newborn baby when he bumps into one his wife's friends. “Joe”, the friend called out “How are you this morning? Tell me, what did your wife have, a boy or a girl?” “Umm” says Joe, "she had a skateboard”. “Don’t be silly”, says the woman. And instructs Joe to go back to the hospital and see his wife. Further down the road Joe sees another of his friends, Sally from work. She comes over to Joe and asks, “Joe, I heard your wife gave birth last night, what did she have, was it a boy or a girl?” Joe again looks somewhat perplexed and replies “Well, umm, she had a motorbike, that’s right a motorbike”. “Joe!” replies Sally. “You must have been up all night, please go back and see your wife right away”. As Joe returned to the hospital, he sees a nurse that helped them into a room the day before. Nurse Gemma comes over to Joe and asks the big question, “Joe, how did your wife go last night? I heard you had your baby, was it a boy or a girl?” Finally Joe is sure this time he knows the answer. “She had a race car! A bright red one” he responds with confidence. The nurse looks somewhat shocked, and again tells Joe to go right up to his wife’s room and find out for certain whether his wife had given birth to either a boy, or a girl.
Upon reaching his wife’s room on the maternity ward, Joe walks into the room and looks across at his wife laying somewhat saddened on the bed in front of him. As she looks up at him, He softly opens his mouth and eagerly asks his wife the question… “Honey, I’ve completely forgotten, please forgive me, but did we have a boy or a girl?” After a short pause Joe’s wife looks up at him and replies. “Joe, honey we had a miscarriage”. “Oh!” Joe exclaims “I knew it was something with wheels!”
In total ignorance I remember telling this ‘joke’ during my late teens, and with complete disregard to the level of insult it might bring if told to someone who had been impacted by the loss of a child pre-birth. Apart from highlighting just how ignorant men can be sometimes, (and obscenely obsessed with wheels), the joke also highlight just how insensitive men can be when it comes to understanding the painful plight conception can be, yet despite all this, I remember the joke got laughs almost every time I told it. Many years later at some point during our own journey experiencing infertility, this joke came back to mind, and I reflected on what could have been a very devastating word should it have fallen on certain ears.
I learnt all about a muscle I didn’t know I had over those years. My empathetic muscle. It’s usually sandwiched right between pain and heart-ache, and unearthed when the two are strained severely. It’s a muscle that rarely gets used, until you’re forced to acknowledge that no matter how painful your journey might be, there's always someone else out there fighting a more painful and challenging battle than you are. And you're finally left to discover that there are human people all around you needing support and understanding just like you are.
Right after our second failed IVF attempt, and about 5 years deep in tears, Em and I decide that we weren’t going to sit around and wallow in our pity on mother’s day again. Instead we decided to call a couple whom we knew were facing infertility challenges as well. And we took them out for lunch at a nice winery down south.
After this time and many more years of facing what seemed like an inevitable life with no offspring, I came to realize just how much empathy had grown in me for people who go through this same journey longing to conceive, nurture and raise a child as their very own.
But I discovered something even more powerful after this. Just as you strengthen a physical muscle in your body by lifting weights in a gym, those muscles are not limited to lifting dumbbells. Those same muscles are now used to lift all things. So now as I listened to peoples stories about pain around infertility, my heart still ached. But also as I heard about peoples story’s around business failure, my heart now ached. And as I heard stories around people’s sickness or disease, my heart also ached. I discovered that my ability to empathize and feel with or for those suffering in any other way had grown dramatically. Whether I had experienced what they were experiencing, or not. I could now empathize with anyone going though any of life’s challenges, providing I continued to work my empathetic muscle.
One of today’s greatest deficiencies is our inability to get others. We all know that rare and special someone who gives us the impression of understanding, even when they really have no idea what we're going through, and yet most of us don't know how to be that person for someone else. You know they’re sincerely listening to your heart, whatever it may be trying to express through your dampened & confused mind. That’s a person who, whether they have experienced what you are going through or not, gets you. They’re lifting weights right in that moment. The weights of empathy. And it’s that level of understanding that builds trust and rapport like no other. Whether in the increasingly apathetic workplace environments we exist, or the sympathy’s demanded through the avatar worlds of social media, what’s really missing is our sincerest ability to empathize with one another, no matter what our experiences have been, and no matter what our beliefs might be. Find someone who gets you, open up to them, and get got today.
