The Veteran’s Hospital
I have written before of being an empathic sensitive. An empathic sensitive or simply “empath” is a person with a heightened sense of the emotions of others, particularly fear or pain. When I was a young man I was summoned to the Veteran Administration Hospital in La Jolla California to get some estate documents signed by a patient. At that time the terminally ill patients were housed together in wards on the fifth floor. As I walked through the corridors I was suddenly struck by an intense flood of fear. When I say struck that is precisely what it felt like, being struck in the solar plexus with a heavy object. I stopped in my tracks and looked into one of the crowded wards and saw an old man on a ventilator machine. He was tied down with plastic wrist ties and while he did not appear conscious he was thrashing, moaning and pleading. Then he would switch to anger and defiance and then back to moaning. Clearly he was dreaming and reliving some painful experience.
Hating Religion: Faith in the Modern Age
In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center by fundamentalist Muslims, the Catholic child abuse scandal and official coverup and in the face of fundamentalist Christians insinuating their beliefs into the American educational and political systems we have seen a popular backlash against religion. Many more people than in the past now identify as agnostic and a small but growing minority as atheist. I have no opinion on any individual’s choice of spiritual path. Their path is their own. However, I disagree with the sentiment that religion is somehow a negative influence in the development of mankind.
