The Curse of Empathy

My mother had it. I've got it. It's the ability to put yourself so much in another person's shoes that you over-identify with them and get so upset by that person's particular trauma that it may as well have happened to you. I wonder if my mother and I should have taken up acting, as we are (were, in her case) so good at taking on roles. This leads me to wonder how actors shake off their roles; how they mimic suffering physical and emotional agonies on stage or on camera, then switch off and become themselves again. It must be possible to do this, otherwise there would be far more nervous breakdowns in the acting profession. Though didn't Daniel Day-Lewis have one after his tasking role in My Left Foot? And I'm pretty sure Stephen Fry had one, too. Perhaps they suffer from the curse of empathy, too. The picture is Sargent's famous portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. Oh, to have that wonderful robe!

Years ago, I used to think, 'Who shall I be today?' and go out as that person, walking differently, talking differently, sometimes pretending to be Russian, wearing clothes that would suit my make-believe persona. I was in turns the super-spy, on the look-out for people tailing me and hidden cameras following my every move, scanning for clues and dead-letter drops (I did in fact witness a briefcase swap in a shop on Victoria Station concourse, though I didn't do anything about it as I didn't know which of the two men to follow); I was the famous person going out incognito; the alien from another planet; the songwriter about to sign a mega-deal; the singer about to be talent-spotted. I was never just plain me. Until now. Now that I have become old and unnoticeable. Maybe now's the time to become that super-spy!