Helping Skill #1: Empathy 

     Empathy is something we all don’t have. Some of us it comes naturally and other need to work on how to be empathetic. Before going to Jamaica, I considered myself to be a person who is empathetic. I may not do it all the time, but I consider myself to look at different perspectives, keep my own beliefs,values, and attitudes aside, to view someone’s situation in their place. What I mean by that is to but myself in their shoes; their truth is their truth, it might not be for other people, but their truth matters and their truth is one of the ways they see their life in that situation. In this photo we were at the Rastafarian Village, learning and hearing about how these people make life for themselves. Hearing how and what they do for a living and how long it takes them to do these things is crazy. For example, the guy in the picture makes drums for a living. He was explaining to us how long it takes him to make these things, what he does to them to make them alive/pretty, and how much he enjoys doing it. He said that he does them all day, he paints them, he decorates them with beads, and the process of digging/carving the insides takes a while. In that moment, I internally was empathetic. I was empathetic because even though I had my own views about what he was telling us, the way he spoke about his work and how he sort of showed us how he starts them and what it takes to make a living off of it showed me he loved it. His tone of voice and his body language verified to me he enjoys it. At first I was thinking it’s hard and how he should take a break from making all of these beautiful drums, but to him it’s completely different. He does this to make ends meet, it’s “his life” as we would put it. Even if it takes him all day like he said, it’s something he enjoys and makes him able to supplies that he needs and of course his basic needs. I  may not have said anything about understanding where he is coming from, but I sure did learn how to see things differently there after I heard him speak and valuing different things and completing different goals per say is very much different than someone who is here or has the access to supplies, money, people, and other things you would need to conquer such a project for much more little time.