Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience o... — Sterling K. Brown

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms.

Author: Sterling K. Brown

Insight: We're trapped inside our own heads in a way that's easy to forget. You see a crowded subway and feel annoyed by the crush of bodies; someone else on that same train might be desperate for human contact after days alone. You think a coworker is being cold and distant; they're actually drowning in anxiety about their kid's health. The same moment, the same room, completely different realities playing out side by side. This is why empathy isn't just about being nice—it's about recognizing that your obvious truth might be someone else's blind spot. When you assume your version of events is the objective one, you're basically saying your prism is clear and everyone else's is distorted. But that's not how it works. We're all looking through colored glass, and nobody's glass is more real than anyone else's. The tricky part is that this is actually harder than sympathy or pity. Those let you stay in your seat. Real empathy requires genuine curiosity about how the world looks from inside someone else's limited, particular, completely valid perspective. It means being willing to have your own understanding of a situation completely rearranged by what you learn.