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I have been thinking lately about a question a dear friend once asked me. If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
There’s an awful lot I’d change about the world given the chance. But if I could choose just one thing, it would be to instill collective empathy in everyone.
Empathy is the realization that my privilege, my power, my position on the ladder of life’s fortunes have not been earned but bestowed- whether by chance, circumstance, or the design of forces beyond my control.
With that realization comes the understanding that I could have just as easily been born in your place. My struggles, my joys, my family, my children, my home could be yours and so, too, could yours be mine.
If I believe that I am deserving of love, of safety, of protection, of kindness, of support, of shelter and food and opportunity, then so are all others. Because the only thing separating us is the randomness of birth, the luck of the draw.
My daughter once told me about something that had happened to another child at school. With big eyes and a quiver in her voice she said: “You know Mommy, when other people are hurting, it’s like I am hurting.”
I have felt this same pain all my life. But as an adult, I have learned how to make it meaningful. To feel the suffering of the world as an open wound in your own soul is to truly see. It is to recognize that pain, injustice, and hardship are not distant realities but shared burdens, threads woven into the fabric of our collective existence. It is the realization that our comfort does not absolve us of responsibility, that turning away does not make suffering disappear.
I explained to my daughter that this feeling is not weakness. It is her superpower. This is your big heart, I told her. It’s what calls you to do something, to seek out how to be useful in reducing the suffering you see around you.
Empathy is not just an emotion; it is an unflinching awareness, a refusal to be blind to the struggles of others. It is the weight of understanding that if one person suffers, we are all diminished. And once you see, once you feel it so deeply that it becomes part of you, the real question is: What will you do with that awareness?
For some of us, empathy is inescapable. But not everyone sees what we see.
We live in a time in which empathy is becoming increasingly scarce, dismissed as weakness, or framed as something without value. A very rich man who has paid his way to a position of great power recently claimed that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Aside from my skepticism about empathy being a hallmark of Western civilization, this statement speaks volumes.
People in power who lack empathy are the most dangerous kinds of leaders. But those who see this as a strength are even more so. They convince themselves- and often others- that their power, position, and privilege are not circumstantial but earned, a reflection of their inherent superiority. They cling to the belief that they could never be vulnerable, never in need- never in someone else’s place.
It is with this view of the world that such people dismantle programs meant to support the poorest, the most vulnerable, those most in need of protection with no more than a word, the stroke of a pen (or click of a mouse), or an executive order signed with a Sharpie later tossed into a crowd. They do not feel the suffering they cause because they do not believe it could ever be their own.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But the truth is, it does not bend on its own. It bends because people pull it toward justice- through action, through courage, and most of all, through empathy.
Empathy is not passive. It is not just about feeling- it is about doing. It is the force that makes us refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. It is what compels us to step in when we could step away, to speak up when silence would be easier.
The arc bends because people make it bend.
And that begins with choosing to see.