A few years ago I went to a nonviolent communication workshop. Kathleen, the facilitator, volunteered in a prison project, teaching the men there nonviolent communication. She talked about what it was like to work with child molesters and murderers.
Through her work she had come to see that these men were not monsters. They didn't set out to hurt anyone. They were in need of human connection and empathy just like the rest of us. She talked about the way that most had been victimized themselves at some point in their lives. And then she said the thing I will never forget. She said, "Some of them never feel fully understood until that moment when they look into the eyes of their victim."
She answered a question that had plagued me since childhood: Why do we hurt each other? And she answered it in a way that maintained a basic belief that I had clung to since childhood, the belief that human beings are basically good. I never believed evil to be a sufficient explanation for the pain and suffering in the world.
The stories I love best are stories about pain and suffering and the redemptive power of empathy, understanding and love. Wally Lamb writes them. Tracy Chapman sings them. We all live them. These are the stories I most want to tell.
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