Refrain.

[astrophel_]

(My parents hear this at semi-regular intervals... every few months, perhaps.)
After I complete this Masters degree thingy--(just got back to Karlsruhe from CT yesterday; it smells like summer outside. Germany and Italy share a certain wonderful summer-scent, I think)--I shall change careers, get a postbacc and go to medical school.
Reasons (today's

Comments

empathy, or lack thereof

[astrophel_]

In 7th grade, my history teacher (someone I admire greatly) scolded me for "lacking in EQ whatever I had gained in IQ." This has bothered me ever since. I think I've learned, in the decade-or-so since, to consider things from others' perspectives. I may have taken it to an extreme--I'm now sometimes paralyzed by the fear of upsetting or disappointing or inconveniencing someone else. But I'm not quite convinced that it's an -emotional- understanding of "the other," just a better intellectual appreciation of their desires/needs/fears. Though I'll jokingly assert that I have no emotions, I know that is absurd... and I find myself brought to tears by the strangest things (and with surprising frequency)--just almost always fiction, and seldom my own personal life. The movie The Lion King will make me cry; my grandmother (who I loved dearly) passing away did not. So I conclude that I still have some empathy-deficit, or at least a deep avoidance of it.
I'm not going to sing a very good "Die Schöne Müllerin" if I can't actually assume--to some degree--the needs and desires and fears of the young miller of these songs, will I? And yet people tell me that my performance of it had them crying by the end. This baffles me. But I'm convinced that this deficit will, eventually, catch up with me.
Which makes me wonder: would I actually care about my patients? (And isn't the illusion of caring enough? Just as it seems to be enough, for now, in singing? And don't I actually care a lot more than I think I do, and this is all some jumble of nonsense with which I'm littering your inbox and my comments page?)
Also: there are some very successful singers who have patently fake emotions on stage. And the job of the performer is not to have an emotional effect upon himself but upon his audience. So I'm not sure what's bothering me here either.
See? you've managed to find the holes in all my arguments today. :)