empathy's ceiling

as defined by your lived experiences 🌱

people who haven’t suffered at all have an unbreakable wall of ignorance. they simply don’t know what it’s like to sacrifice, compromise, or make decisions in the face of tragedy. that kind of perspective doesn’t just magically appear one day.

you unlock new understanding with your own experiences. they always add perspective.

of course someone who has lived under a rock and been sheltered their whole life is also incredibly dense and lacks empathy. 🤷‍♀️ if you’ve never had to wrestle with difficult trade-offs or consequences, it’s hard to understand why other people make the decisions they do.

you can only try to understand so much. otherwise, the empathy becomes shallow. experience is what deepens it. but if not through experience, you can still get pretty damn close to passing empathy’s ceiling through genuine, open-minded conversation. listening to someone explain their life honestly forces you to confront realities you’ve never personally lived through.

i’d say that kind of conversation is an experience in and of itself.

i’ve had countless moments where it was hard for me to empathize with a situation, but 6 months later, my experiences and conversations led me to a place where i was able to genuinely empathize.

it’s also why it’s so important for children to grow up in non-homogeneous communities and to continue experiencing a wide array of activities and cultures as they grow. the more variety of human life you encounter, the more reference points your empathy has to work with.

honestly, you’ll never fully understand every life. but, every experience (your own or someone else’s) pushes that ceiling a little higher.

today’s drops 🔍️

• register for this art exhibit + dinner event @ sxsw tomorrow

• software engineering internship @ millennium

• 5 days left of the $80,000 gemini agent hackathon