Inspiring humanity, Zelenskyy asks: ‘Can you imagine?’

It’s not enough that we see the devastation and slaughter in Ukraine from the comfort of our homes, through television screens and newspaper photos. It’s not enough that we feel sympathetic toward the victims of Vladimir Putin.

Sympathy happens in brief moments of feeling sorry for others while wishing things were better. Hearts are touched, not moved. We see people hurt and how they respond to that pain, but we often don’t take the time to imagine what that pain feels like because it belongs to someone else.

It’s not sympathy Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking; it’s empathy. It’s the use of our imaginations to understand the bombardment and suffering of Ukraine as if it were happening to us. Empathy, activated by imagination, moves people to act as if it were themselves, or someone they know and love, who is in danger.

So, when addressing the Canadian Parliament last week, Zelenskyy said, “Imagine that Canadian

facilities have been bombed similarly as our buildings and our memorial places are being bombed. A number of families have died. Every night is a horrible night.”

Throughout his speech, he used the refrain, “Can you imagine?”

The next day, when speaking to the U.S. Congress, Zelenskyy appealed to memory, a stimulant to imagination.

“Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Americans, in your great history,” he said, “you have pages that would allow you to understand Ukrainians, understand us now when we need you, right now. Remember Pearl Harbor, terrible morning of

December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. Just remember it. Remember September 11th, a terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities, independent territories, into battlefields. When innocent people were attacked, attacked from air, just like nobody else expected it, you could not stop it. Our country experiences the same every day. Right now, at this moment, every night for three weeks now.”

Requesting, again, a no-fly zone, Zelenskyy invoked Martin Luther King Jr. when he said: “‘I have a dream.’ These words are known to each of you today. I can say I have a need. I need to protect our sky. I need your decision, your help, which means exactly the same. The same you feel when you hear the words, ‘I have a dream.’ ”

Zelenskyy understands that most people yearn to do good and right by each other, to ease suffering and help each other along. That yearning can be buried, muted, cowered and forgotten until it’s awakened by a call for help, a plea for empathy, a demand that we look beyond ourselves or those who look like us.

In John Grisham’s novel “A Time to Kill,” a Black Mississippi father kills the two men who raped his 10-year-old daughter. In the movie version, his defense attorney, played by Matthew McConaughey, gives a closing argument in which he asks the all-white jury to close their eyes as he describes in horrific details the brutalities committed on the child. He concludes, “Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.”

He pauses for 21 seconds. “Now imagine she’s white.” Empathy shouldn’t be reserved for only those who look, think and worship like us. Our power to imagine the suffering of strangers, of anyone “different” from us, shouldn’t be limited by our inability to see beyond those differences.

In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, several Western journalists embarrassed themselves by expressing surprise this was happening somewhere which was “relatively civilized’ and “not a developing third world country.”

In an unchallenged interview with a BBC reporter, a Ukrainian politician spoke of seeing European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed.

It took the invasion of Ukraine for these folks to know that white people could be victimized by war? This was the same racism that made it difficult for Black refugees to get out of Ukraine.

But if imagining the suffering of those with whom we’re most familiar broadens our ability to imagine the lives of those with whom we’re least familiar, that expands the number of people moved to act.

One reason Zelenskyy inspires is because he believes enough in our humanity to appeal to it. Trying to stay alive one more day to save his country, he dreams, he imagines, hoping the world joins him in this quest for peace.