I consider empathy to be the greatest and most challenging virtue. Taken deeply serious it will eat you alive and crush you under the weight of the world’s cruelty.
It’s hard enough to muster empathy at times. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to find some for a man who said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage."
His preference? Sympathy— he understood pity, but never strived to understand who you were.