Empathy and its Limits

In which John thinks about the limits of empathy, how we conceive of suffering, and how little he knows about being a bird. This video uses a format called The Format.
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[@ToppyTree]

There's something very soothing about The Format

[@abdullahenani9670]

John and the format get along so well

[@taylorcarmen5336]

As a professor of disability history thank you for the conversation about disability and illness. We will all become disabled if we live long enough. The best case senario is that you love your disabled life as I do mine.

[@Bruh-eq1km]

I love this format. I also forgot there was a whole house that John occupies and not just that little space in front of the bookshelf. He and Sarah have such good taste.

[@robinhahnsopran]

"There's nothing invalid about living with illness except that our social order makes it so" - John once again dropping truths about the disabled/chronically ill experience! ✨

[@ringstadschauffler1523]

john so clearly lives in a house with an art curator and is yet so frumpled in his dress and i love that leaving the visual contrast be is a key schtick of The Format (at least in my viewing experience of the format, like it speaks a lot to human frailty and my own disatisfaction with how i complete my own ambitions)

[@danielarthur04]

John! What an apt video for Rare Disease Day! We need to listen to chronically ill and disabled people more!

[@ariana.cherise]

John’s deep pondering in the style of The Format is quickly becoming my absolute favourite thing like, ever.

[@gopitri128]

My mom, after I told her about my most recent issues with insomnia: "Have you tried just going to bed anyway?" I wish so badly that more people would just listen and believe. Thanks John.

[@foysalmahmud1936]

Low level background anxiety is exactly the term I needed to describe my every waking minute. Thanks John

[@noviatoria2436]

"Illness is not a moral narrative"

[@levinknox]

“I’m not disabled, you are just temporarily abled.”

[@sarjulia]

"Illness is not some moral narrative..." so true. And neither is poverty.

[@cheriseking4945]

I was reflecting on how much I am grateful for the words of John Green when it occurred to me that John is no longer a Chaplain at a hospital, but it's kind of like he expanded from a hospital to the world and he's still standing there helping us all through it. Thank you John.

[@ashnewsam]

“I was very rarely alone, except in my fear and pain where I was always alone”… this. this is what I’ve been trying to explain to people about mental illness, but have never found the words. this whole video hit hard. but that one sentence describes my experiences in psychiatric hospitals all too well.

[@taniamurilloduran]

"I was very rarely alone, except in my fear and my pain, where i was always alone"- this applies to grief as well. There can be so much grief in disability where I have slowly lost friendships, jobs, opportunities, because I could not function as " i was supposed to" or "normal". Facing other's pain and fear can remind us of our own and I've come to accept that not everyone had the bandwidth to see my disability and see past it to my humanity.

[@goldstarsforall]

The Format is such a refreshing thing to watch. It's genuine artistry

[@thefollowingisatest4579]

I'm disabled and was recently kicked out of a home owned by people who promised they were my friends and would keep a place for me, and it made me realize that empathy is often limited by time. Like, having to deal with me could be exhausting at times and as such I isolated myself in the hopes of avoiding the erosion of their empathy, that process where over time you fixate on all the little annoyances and problems with a person until that is what they are, a burden, an annoyance. It can happen in any relationship of any kind, not just one between the disabled and abled. Empathy is work, and for a lot of people so worn down by the work already demanded of them by a callous society, it is too much work.

[@sierrarobinson4447]

Being very high risk and trying to still avoid our current plague, this really resonated with how it feels in 2023. While the world moves on, people like me are ignored and also invalidated constantly. That we're insane and overly anxious, that we want attention, that we're virtue signaling. I just want to be as healthy as I possibly can and no one is listening.

[@meri3580]

I’ve had a hard time accepting that I am disabled, and now I have a hard time getting other people to accept it. This video hit particularly close to home today.