T(V) & Sy(E)mpathy

It's Wednesday afternoon and I've just got back from getting groceries. The whole time I was shopping I couldn't get her out of my head. How hard it must be to be raising a daughter by yourself. To have lost your partner not quite a week before giving birth. I thought about how sad it is that he will never get to meet his daughter, see how beautiful she is and how much joy she brings everyone. What must it be like to be going through the happiest and the saddest moments of one's life, at the same time?



The thing is, last Wednesday I wasn't thinking about real people. I was thinking about Nina and Patrick from the TV show Offspring. They are make-believe. Fictional. The events that have transpired in Nina's life have played out soley on TV, for the enjoyment of people watching at home.

So why do I get so choked up when I see the fantasy scenes of Nina with her daughter's dead father?

A couple of weeks ago my sister and I were discussing our favourite guilty pleasure show of the moment, My Kitchen  Rules. We were talking about who we liked, who we didn't like, who we thought should have been kicked off and who we thought should win. My step-dad looked over from the kitchen and asked who we were talking about.

When he realised it was a TV show, and people we didn't actually know, he smirked and made some comment about us being so invested in it, as if it was somehow going to affect our lives in some way. He remarked something similar later on, when Mum and I were discussing Downton Abbey (a show I only recently watched three seasons of back-to-back). He couldn't understand why we got so passionate about it and discussed it all so fiercely.

"They're not real people!" he exclaimed.

Mum and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes. We know why.

Offspring and Downton Abbey are two shows guaranteed to have me feeling something!
{Image Found Here}

The thing is, it's got nothing to do with whether or not the people are "real". In that time and space of watching the show they are real enough. It's nice to have people and things to discuss that aren't a part of reality. To be able to enter a world of make-believe. To be able to discuss people and their lives without having to feel guilty for it or having to actually deal with any of the drama ourselves.

And when it comes to feeling real emotions for these characters, these make-believe people? What it really comes down to is empathy.

The real reason I got so choked up watching the first episode of the new season of Offspring? I can't watch what the character Nina is going through without thinking about how it is I would feel if I lost my husband a week before my daughter was born.

I watch, and I inevitably think about how horrible and hard I would find it to lose Dave. To have to bring up my beautiful girls all by myself. And it's those thoughts, that wondering, that produces emotion in me. It would be the hardest thing I would ever have to do.

To a lesser degree (and this is not to elevate the emotions or feelings of fictional characters, don't get me wrong), it's the same kind of emotion that wells in me when I watch or read the news. I see and read about horrible things that happen to ordinary, every day people. People just like me. I think about what they must be going through and then think about how I would feel if it had happened to me.

I imagine that their hearts must be broken. I feel but a tiny percentage of the emotions that I imagine they would be experiencing.

The empathy I feel for fictional characters in a TV show is not to the same degree as that which I would feel for a real person that I read or hear about. But it's empathy all the same, and I'm not afraid to admit it. It gives me an excuse to release some of the emotions or feelings that I may have been repressing in my real life, an excuse to just let a few tears flow. Because we all know how good it can be to have a little cry every now and then.

I would much rather care about fictional characters on a TV show, or feel a small part of the sadness and loss of real people with real problems, than feel nothing at all.

If I'm allowed to cheer and get excited about a sporting event or someones personal achievement, then by rights, I'm also allowed to care and empathise with the flipside of those emotions. The things that real people, and yes fictional characters too, might be going through.

Do you find yourself being sucked in to the emotion and drama of fictional characters on TV and in books? Do you struggle to watch or read the news sometimes because the thought of what these people must be going through hurts too much? Or do I need to suck it up, get my head out of the clouds and only worry more about the things my own life?

{First image of Patrick from Offspring found here}

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