Being sensitive is a virtue, not a vice. It is the very heart of empathy and the way to care for the soul.

Recently, a demagoguery exerise in futility led by Vice-President Cheney voiced strong opposition to Senator John Kerry's call for Americans, our political leaders, in particular, to be "sensitive" in fighting the war on terrorism, a war that many believe is producing more terroists than are being destroyed. Although Cheney, unlike Kerry, did not serve in the military, he blasted Kerry for urging Americans to be sensitive in fighting the war on terrorism. Supposingly, his non-military inexperience qualifies him to be an expert on war.
While I will deliberately refrain from engaging in this political debate, a posture that is incompatible with my inner urging, I do want to state without hesitation and unequivocally that "being sensitive" is a virtue, not a vice. The chief components of sensitivity are: understanding derived from embracing truth, awarenes, particuarly, of the needs and conditions of others, and empathy which is love-power that propells a person to put himself in the place of another person, to walk in another person's shoes, to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. The Prophet Ezekiel who inhabited the valley of dead bones where many of his fellow-country people resided, put it this way, "I sat where they sat." This was a sensitive prophet.
Some years ago I was a member of a group who recommended that a large city plagued by racists practices of some police officers require policemen to take sensitivty training. That city responded positively to the recommendation and the result was improved relations between policemen and African Americans. Having been engaged prior to this sensitivity training for policemen in facilitating sensitivity training groups I was invited to be a consultant for that city's first police sensitivity training program.
One further comment on the Cheney-Kerry hype. To Cheney I say, not only should we be sensitive in fighting a war, we should recognize that being sensitive can help win a war. And more importantly, there is a perponderance of evidence making it unmistakably clear that being sensitive can prevent a war. Could it be that we are currently engaged in a no-win war in Iraq because our leaders were not sensitive about people...abourt fighting a war? May every American resolve to be a sensitive person. I proudly declare that I am a sensitive person.
Many victms in our society are victims, among them the homeless, wrongfully incarcerated people and the poverty-stricken, because of the wrath inflicted upon them by insensitive people. When I observe man's inhumanity to man, his lack of sensitivity, I become aggrieved and indignant. I feel like I want to take those insensitive brutes by their throats and strangle them. Let sensitive people rise and help lessen the needless pain, hurt, misery and premature deaths that are caused by insensitive people. Dammit I feel! And I care!

Copyright 2004 by Uriah J. Fields