Empathy

2016 was the bumpiest year I remember in a long time--a few psychic and skin bruises, along with other jolts both personal and national.  I loved Meryl Streep's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes--and her admission that she'd lost her voice due to screaming and lamentations.

       An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, compassionate work.

       But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart, not because it was good, it was -- there’s nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.

       It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege and power and the capacity to fight back. It, it kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.

       Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose....We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage....

      Once when I was standing around the set one day, whining about something, we were going to work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me: “Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?” Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight,

      As my, as my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”

       There are a lot of things I'd rather not happen because I'd really prefer happy happy all the time, but as Elizabeth the physical therapist said, "Sometimes we learn the most when things are not easy." And as Carlene says, "Everything is tuition."

       With this new administration, we don't yet know what the payment plan will be--just as we don't know what we have to pay for personal life lessons--but both include disillusionment and heartbreak.

       Certain challenges shake our confidence more than others, cutting deep into the psyche of who we are as a country and as individuals. We're beyond lucky if we have friends and family members who are on the same page when we are, or have been there, or who see the ups and the downs as the life lessons they are.  Meryl Streep said it so well: the act of empathy is a privilege and a responsibility.