Goines On: Empathy or hope?

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As Goines pushed the shopping cart toward his car, a woman perhaps in her 20-somethings crossed his path, on her way to Walmart’s entrance. His surge of compassion for the woman was immediate and involuntary, but somehow different from previous such experiences. Goines wondered what was “extra” about this one. The woman was not strikingly different from hundreds of other strangers. Instantly the idea emerged that his sympathy for the woman might not derive solely from his empathy for her, but also derive from his empathy with her circle of acquaintances, as though he loved her through her husband’s eyes, her mother’s, her family’s.
    If something like that was happening, and had been happening with other people for a long time (before Goines realized what was happening), why wasn’t he also feeling negative feelings towards people? Surely they all had someone in their lives who treated them badly, disliked them. Did Goines have a filter that wouldn’t admit anything but caritas? It seemed more likely, trying to think logically, that he wasn’t empathizing with the woman’s “circle of acquaintances” at all. Maybe he was just hoping for her that her circle loved her, loving her in case they didn’t….

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