Live with Empathy in 2024

I recently ran across a letter that my dad wrote me in 1994. Yes, that 1994. Five years before Prince set the standard on partying. Six years before the predicted end of the world (Y2K). Seven years before the 9/11 attacks that changed…well, everything. Twenty-six years before the global pandemic known as Covid.

I was working as an Army Recruiter at the time. I was killing it! I had just been selected as the New Recruiter of the Year for my Battalion and Brigade and went on to rank third at the US Army Board. I also had a 13-month-old son and a wife of almost six years at home.

My dad was working as a Probation and Parole Agent for the State of South Carolina. He wrote me a personal letter and included a poem that he said he wrote to keep him humble in his work. I am not sure if he wrote the letter prompted by nostalgia as he considered my new stage in life as a dad, or if he was just saying hello…or if he was doing a little dad coaching given my recent successes…but as I read it a few times in recent days, I found it to contain some of that “dad wisdom” that he became really effective at sharing through our latter years together. (Or maybe he always was…and I just became a better listener.) I chose to maintain Dad’s voice throughout, complete with his choice of words (which seemed a little forced for the sake of rhyme) grammar, etc. They make me smile. While Dad was a pretty important man most of my life, he didn’t let it go to his head. Not even a “wee little bit.”

The Other Side of the Desk

By: Harold Aiken, May 10, 1994

Have you ever thought just a wee little bit,

Of how it would seem to be a misfit,

And how you would feel if you had to sit,

On the other side of the desk?

Have you ever looked at the man who seemed a bum,

As he sat before you, nervous and dumb,

And thought of the courage it took to come,

To the other side of the desk?

Have you thought of his dreams that went astray,

Of the hard real facts of his every day,

Of the things in his life that make him stray,

On the other side of the desk?

Have you thought to yourself, “It could be I,

If the good things of life had passed me by,

And maybe I’d bluster and maybe I’d lie,

From the other side of the desk.”?

Did you make him feel he was full of greed,

Make him ashamed of his race or creed,

Or did you reach out to him in his need,

To the other side of the desk?

May God give us wisdom and lots of it,

And much compassion and plenty of grit,

So that we may be kinder to those who sit,

On the other side of the desk.

As we begin a new year, an opportunity lies before us. We can choose to live with a perspective like this–one of humility and empathy. We live in days where “zingers” and caustic tweets are rewarded with likes and shares. Our culture celebrates the bombastic tones of impertinent people more than calm, considerate, and understanding interactions. We can do better. We can choose better. It begins with perspective. Thanks, dad! From the other side of the desk…