"
Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we’ve committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness, even when I’m deep in my own. To say “going through the motions”—this isn’t reduction so much as acknowledgment of the effort—the labor, the motions, the dance—of getting inside another person’s state of heart or mind.
This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always arise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.
"
"If you start living for the smallest reasons, that’s when you know you’re really living. The smell of rain after a thunderstorm, the shades of pavements when it’s autumn, the harvest season and the unspoken competition to pick the freshest tomatoes, the mediocre midnights and the color of the sunsets, the smell of bakeshops early in the morning, the frosty breeze of the fast-approaching winter, the warmth of oven when baking Christmas cookies, the thickness of paper when flipping through magazine pages, the smell of new books and new clothes and new things. When you start looking at things, really really looking, you’ll start living. Because then you’ll understand how it is to really be a human in this world full of people."
"
1. That late night burgers and silly races home with with your best friend in your new cars.
2. The snickering in the back with your friend at the teacher in the class. Because you think you’re the cool kids.
3. The late Sunday afternoon tea with your sick friend while you swap stories about life’s. Because for a moment you think the world’s falling apart
4. The 5 year old girl who won’t walk into class if you don’t hold her hand. Every Week.
5. The camping trip and music festival that you and your friends are planning for the end of the year.
6. The boys who come in every week and show you the new moves they learn watching movies. Who say they just want to be like you when they are older
7. The 6 year old who draws a new picture of you and them every week, that you hang up in your bedroom wall and never throw out:
8. The questionable things you and your friends do on a Saturday night. Those are the nights you’ll remember.
9. The Spring day drives to work with the music on full blast. Singing like a fool and everyone is laughing around you.
10. Everyone who is counting on you in some small way. Even if it’s for you to finish your part of the assignment. So that you guys can pass the class.
1. Whether or not you are enough for that one person.
"
