When did my heart harden? How did empathy slip away? Dr. Lindelson pondered these questions in the spacious office where she had practiced psychotherapy for forty years, since she completed he ... [+]
When I was in Grade Eight at Lakeview Elementary School in Regina, Saskatchewan, our teacher, Mr. Graham, used a miniature hand-cranked generator to demonstrate electrical current for us. We all held hands and formed a circle around the classroom. With the students closest to Mr. Graham holding the positive and negative leads, he slowly turned the little crank. We all began to feel a tingle as the current passed through us. We were all together for a moment, until it became too ticklish to bear. I haven’t seen some of those people since Grade Eight. Some of them are dead now. But we were one then, and in my heart we will always be.