In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselve... — Sarah McBride

In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it's almost incomprehensible.

Author: Sarah McBride

Insight: We live in a time of incredible sorting—we find our people, our news, our neighborhoods. It's comfortable. But comfort can actually shrink us. The real stretch happens when someone's struggle genuinely doesn't make sense to you at first. Maybe you've never felt financial panic, or isolation, or discrimination. The instinct is to dismiss what you don't understand or assume someone should just handle it better. Empathy isn't agreeing with someone or even fully grasping their situation. It's the willingness to sit with the discomfort of not understanding, and to lean in anyway. What makes this different from just "being nice" is the work involved. It's easy to feel sorry for people whose problems look like yours. The real exercise is asking yourself about someone whose experience feels foreign—maybe even frustrating. Why might a person make that choice? What might I be missing? This doesn't mean abandoning your own values or pretending pain is always equally severe. It means resisting the shortcut of judgment long enough to see someone as real. In practical terms, this is what keeps communities from fracturing into pure tribalism. It's also what makes you less brittle as a person—less trapped by your own narrow experience.