The HSP Mirror

[The big spiritual, philosophical, and moral questions] are always being answered, implicitly, by a society's values and behaviors--whom it respects, whom it loves, whom it fears, whom it leaves to languish unhoused and unfed.  When these questions are addressed explicitly, it is usually by HSPs. --E.A.

Reading this excerpt really felt like another a-ha moment for me.  Since my time as a kid constantly asking about why things were the way they were, until today, I've always reflected upon the condition of the world, internally and externally.  Most people just can't handle all that reflection, just as I am amazed at how some people can put their bodies through all kinds of "torture" (whether it be the day-to-day lifestyle of being planted in front of an office computer or training for and then running a marathon).

Being born an HSP made me vulnerable to the suffering around me.  With the communications advances of the last century, world news is as easy to be exposed to as local news. It means the world is experienced as a local space.  Because HSPs have no choice but to feel these internal and external events, deeply, it is natural that these disturbances would then be expressed outwards, into society's space.

Just the other day, there was a shooting in Arizona of a politician and "others."  The others got a bit of attention, but not much.  They all had lives; they were all people.  These kinds of subtle disparities are more obvious to an HSP, and they point to some of the reasons that this kind of violence and targeting occur.  As the ensuing discussions unfold, the reflections of some HSPs will be given some attention.  Society will be forced to reflect, even if just for a bit, to have a better understanding of why these dramatic and traumatic events take place.  These violent manifestations are not surprising to HSPs because we feel their sources long before they erupt, which is why we are always asking pesky questions that demand reflection and self-awareness, either on a personal level or on a social level.

Usually, though, interest in this kind of awareness is short-lived and people get back to their routines of living and thinking, which then leads us back to the problems that create these eruptions.  I think many HSPs wonder if this cycle will ever be broken.  Will people experience enough reflection that they are changed by it?  If not in big leaps, then by small steps in which, collectively, that awareness reduces the number of problems being created so the eruptions are less frequent, less violent, or of a different nature?

I don't know.