Can We Still Hear Each Other?

I have to admit, when I decided to write about “empathy,” my fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time. To dissect this almost overused word in a long essay felt like a destined-to-fail adventure, and several times, I almost closed the document to write something lighter.

“Empathy”? Really, is there a more boring, more clichéd word?

It’s like a jade stone polished smooth by countless hands in self-improvement camps, sleek, warm, politically correct, shimmering with cheap wisdom. It appears in every emotional blogger’s video title, every company team-building icebreaker, and every time we try to comfort a friend but miss the mark, it’s pulled out like a lifeline. We use it to brandish our kindness, to accuse others of coldness; it’s almost become a new form of social currency.

We all “know” it’s important. We have “have empathy” on our lips, just as we have “drink more hot water,” practiced and meaningless.

But do we truly “feel” it?

I don’t know about you. But for me, the answer is, most of the time, I don’t. What I feel is a rupture of connection, the futility of communication, two diametrically opposed yet ultimately convergent, chilling desolations.

The first kind of desolation, I call it the “Dry Well.”

You must have fallen into it too. You’re carrying something very important to you, maybe a messed-up interview, a relationship that ended without resolution, or just a trivial thought that keeps you tossing and turning at night. You feel it’s gone stale inside you, and if you don’t air it out, you’ll rot. So you muster the greatest courage of your life, like a soldier going into battle for the first time, cradling your raw, pulsating heart, and approach the person you trust.

You speak. You’re incoherent, rambling, you feel your expression is comically clumsy. But you still say it. You carefully hand over that stale concern, like a precious, fragile bird’s egg, into the other person’s hands.

Then, nothing happens.

The other person nods, even says “Hmm,” “I understand.” But their eyes are unfocused, as if seen through frosted glass. Their body language tells you they’re busy, they’re thinking of something else, they’re politely waiting for you to finish your monologue. The bird’s egg you offered isn’t caught; it falls directly, silently, into a bottomless dry well. No echo, no ripple, not even the sound of being swallowed by darkness.

It just disappears. Along with that fragile bit of courage you managed to gather to show yourself.

What’s the most terrifying part? The most terrifying part is that after shouting into this well for a long time, you even start to wonder if your own voice was inherently false? If your own pain was inherently an overreaction? You begin to feel that you shouldn’t have these feelings, that you bothered others. You start to learn to shove all your worries back inside, letting them slowly, quietly rot there.

You become your own well.

The second kind of desolation is more dangerous and deceptive than the “Dry Well.” I call it the “Hunting Ground.”

In the “Hunting Ground,” you won’t encounter indifference; quite the opposite, you’ll encounter extreme enthusiasm. You meet a “perfect” listener, a soulmate you’ve dreamt of.

He (or she) is like the most brilliant mind reader. Every word you utter, he instinctively grasps; every thought you haven’t yet expressed, he anticipates and prepares the way for you. Every word he offers is like a tailored salve, precisely applied to your most painful wound. You feel you’ve met a kindred spirit, a savior; you feel your long-wandering heart has finally found its harbor.

You begin to hold nothing back. You read your childhood traumas, your vulnerabilities, your ambitions, your most secret desires and fears to him, like an open diary, page by page. You think this is a ritual of exchanging souls.

But you slowly discover something is amiss.

He is like a ruthless hunter, meticulously exploring every inch of your inner landscape, not to love you, but to more easily encircle and capture you. He turns all your emotions, desires, and fears into coordinates on his map. Your vulnerabilities become his reins of control; your desires, his bait for seduction. He uses what you need most to manipulate you, to make you do what he wants.

In this perilous hunting ground, every time you open your heart, it’s not an exchange of trust, but a tightening noose around your neck. You hand over not your true self, but a weapon. Until finally, you are battered and bruised, and you realize with horror that the person who understood you best was precisely the one who hurt you most deeply.

From then on, you no longer dare to easily lay yourself bare. You learn to disguise, to speak disingenuously, to raise the highest defenses against everyone who tries to approach you.

We seem to live between these two fates. We are like lonely specters, wandering between the “Dry Well” and the “Hunting Ground,” either withering from not being understood or being destroyed by being excessively “understood.”

What happened to us? What devoured that supposedly innate ability to hear each other’s heartbeats, that instinct that allows us to recognize each other in the darkness?

This essay does not intend to provide a definitive answer.

It’s more like a medical record, or rather, a difficult self-redemption. I will play not the role of a teacher imparting wisdom, but that of a fellow seeker lost in the fog, a documentarian attempting to dissect myself and our era.

I will shatter all those psychological terms, philosophers’ quotes, and profound insights from think tanks, kneading them into stories I’ve experienced firsthand, heard tell of, or even fictionalized, stories filled with dirt and the smell of blood.

This will be a complex journey; we may encounter contradictions and confusion, but this is the essence of exploration. We might find sudden clarity in one chapter, only to fall into deeper迷茫 in the next.

But perhaps, in this chaotic, imperfect journey, destined to find no endpoint, we can find a little something, a clue to hear each other again.

Even if it’s just a little bit.

So, let’s begin.

Part One: The Fading Echo

Chapter One: That Life-Saving “Noise-Cancelling Headphone”

To understand why we fall into the two desolations of the “Dry Well” and the “Hunting Ground,” we first need to talk about a somewhat counter-intuitive fact: many times, we lose the ability to hear each other not because we are inherently cold, but precisely because we have felt, or are feeling, too much—so much that it can utterly destroy an adult.

The story about the “stink of a tidal lake,” I think you might have heard it. An outsider went on a business trip to a city by a lake. Unfortunately, there was an algal bloom in the lake those days, and the entire city was permeated with an indescribable stench of rotting fish and shrimp mixed with chemicals. The smell made him dizzy, unable to eat or sleep, and within two days, he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But what shocked him was that the locals seemed completely oblivious to it. He complained to the hotel receptionist, who politely smiled and said, “Sir, it’s always been like this here.” He chatted with a taxi driver, who laughed heartily, “Smell? What smell? I don’t smell anything! Young man, you’re too sensitive.”

Were the locals’ noses broken? Of course not.

It was their brains, in order to allow people in that “toxic gas” environment to live normally, quietly, and actively adjusted their olfactory sensitivity to the lowest level. This is a remarkable, though somewhat sad-sounding, survival wisdom. When a pain becomes background noise, constant and unavoidable, our only way to survive is to become “deaf” or “blind.”

Now, let’s replace this inescapable “stench” with “emotions.”

Imagine a child whose home is an emotional “tidal lake.”

There might not be shouting arguments or physical violence. What’s there is something more tormenting, more corrosive. It’s the endless cold war between parents, a silence that can freeze the air; it’s the daily, barbed sarcasm and belittlement, “You’re useless,” “I must have been blind to give birth to you”; or perhaps, a more sophisticated, more civilized “noise”—the pervasive, suffocating “disappointment.”

I know a friend; let’s call him Ah Wei.

Ah Wei is the most “perfect” man I’ve ever met. He’s a partner at a renowned law firm, young and promising, handsome, and impeccable in his dealings with others. He’s gentle, considerate, remembers every friend’s birthday, and takes to heart every casual remark you’ve made. He never loses his temper, never loses composure, and always wears that perfectly appropriate, reassuring smile. He’s like a robot powered by the most advanced AI, every program flawlessly set.

But those of us who have known him for over ten years, who have gotten drunk with him, know that beneath this perfect exterior, there’s emptiness.

Ah Wei’s home was a typical “tidal lake” built of “disappointment.”

His father was a frustrated university professor, unappreciated throughout his life, seeing everyone else as mediocre. His mother, on the other hand, was a housewife who pinned all her life’s hopes on her son. In Ah Wei’s memory, there were never arguments in his home, because that meant “losing face,” being “undignified.” But there was also never any real “sound.”

I once had dinner at his house, and it was the most oppressive meal of my life. At the dinner table, three people, almost no conversation. Only the dreadfully clear clinking of bowls and chopsticks.

His father wouldn’t scold him, but at the dinner table, watching figures on the TV news, he would sigh about “the declining morals, mediocrity rampant,” and his eyes would subtly, faintly glance at Ah Wei, every sigh seeming to say: “You must never be as much of a failure as I am.”

His mother wouldn’t hit him, but when he came second in his class, she would peel an apple for him, saying in the gentlest tone: “Not bad, just three points short of first place. Did you misread that application problem again? Oh, you’re just a little careless; if you were a tiny bit more careful, it would be perfect.”

These words were the “stench” and “noise” in Ah Wei’s home.

They weren’t deafening like shouts, but they were like mercury, pervasive, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, slowly, slowly seeping into every crevice of his growth. His first place in exams brought him warnings of “don’t be arrogant”; his violin practice brought reminders of “the neighbor’s child has already passed grade ten”; his first time bringing a girl he liked home, brought his mother’s worried remark after he saw her off, “That girl seems to come from a very ordinary family.”

All his efforts brought not affirmation, but higher demands. All his feelings brought not a response, but exhortations of “you should be more sensible.”

He remembers when he was in third grade, his little hamster died. He cried heartbrokenly, holding the tiny, cold body, refusing to let go. His mother came over, didn’t hug him, just calmly said, “Don’t cry, what’s there to cry about a mouse? You have an exam tomorrow, go study.”

From that day on, Ah Wei never shed another tear in front of his parents.

A child, if long exposed to such a silent, toxic environment, in order not to let his fragile heart be completely suffocated by the stench of “disappointment” or driven mad by the noise of “you should,” his only way out is to learn from the locals by the “tidal lake,” quietly, to turn down his “emotional sense of smell” and “emotional sense of hearing” to the lowest level.

He put on a pair of life-saving, top-of-the-line, all-isolating “noise-cancelling headphones.”

These headphones helped him filter out all the continuous pain that could destroy him. He couldn’t hear his father’s sighs, nor smell his mother’s disappointment. He turned himself into a perfect executor, following the path set by his parents, getting into the best university, finding the best job, becoming that “child of someone else’s family.”

These headphones, back then, were his lifesaver. Without them, Ah Wei might have collapsed long ago.

But the problem is, when he grew up, when he finally used his achievements to escape that home, that “tidal lake,” he forgot, or rather, no longer knew how to take off these headphones.

They had grown into his flesh and blood.

He entered new relationships, entered society. He dated a few times, and every girlfriend’s evaluation of him was strikingly consistent: he was good, impeccably good, but he was like a lover behind glass. You share your work joys with him, and he smiles and pours you a glass of wine, saying “You’re great,” but you don’t feel he’s truly happy for you. You confide your heartbreak to him, and he hugs you, hands you tissues, and says “Don’t be sad, it will pass,” but you feel he’s like a detached psychologist, going through the motions of comfort.

One of his ex-girlfriends once said to him, at their breakup, the most cutting words: “Being with you, I feel like I’m dating an app. You’re fully functional, smooth to use, but you have no soul.”

He didn’t not want to feel; it’s just that his receiver was already manually set to its lowest power twenty years ago.

He became the perfect, impeccable Ah Wei in our eyes. And also, in the eyes of every ex-girlfriend, that bottomless “Dry Well.”

He seems cold, distant, even a bit “scummy.” But if you could get a chance to lift a corner of his invisible headphones, what you might hear isn’t emptiness, but a childhood recording filled with clamor, pain, and fear, long forgotten by himself.

He doesn’t have no heart.

He’s just too afraid to smell that smell again.

Chapter Two: The Forgotten Seed

Ah Wei’s story explains much of the “acquired” detachment, developed as a survival mechanism in a toxic environment. Those “noise-cancelling headphones” are a heavy armor we fashioned ourselves during our growth.

But there’s another situation, seemingly more fundamental and intractable.

You must have met people like this. You feel they’re not “unwilling” to listen to you, not even “afraid” to feel your emotions. They just… “can’t.” In their world, the dimension of “emotion” seems to be entirely absent. When you tell them about your pain, it’s like describing Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” to a colorblind person. They can understand the literal meaning of every word, but they simply cannot see the flowing, burning, heartbreaking blues and yellows.

Why is this?

This brings us to a topic older than “noise-cancelling headphones.” When we are born, crying into this noisy world, what kind of factory settings do we come with?

I like to compare empathy to a “seed.”

It’s not like a finished product with pre-set functions, as if we are born with full-featured, top-tier empathy. That’s absurd. What we receive is more like a tiny, uncertain possibility. Each of us is born holding such a seed. Scientists use grand-sounding terms to describe it, such as the “mirror neuron system,” saying it’s the physiological hardware basis for our ability to “imitate” and “feel” others’ emotions.

However, for a seed to sprout and grow, having the seed itself is far from enough. It also needs three things: soil, sunlight, and water.

A baby, lying in a cradle, is hungry, or his diaper is wet, and he feels uncomfortable. What can he do? The only thing he can do is cry with all his might.

This cry is the first seed he plants. It’s the first signal he sends to this strange, vast world.

What happens next will determine the fate of this seed, and to some extent, the fate of this child’s entire life.

If, at this moment, a pair of warm hands gently pick him up. A soft voice sounds in his ear: “Oh, baby, don’t cry, let Mommy see, are you hungry? Or is your bottom uncomfortable?” This action, this voice, is the first ray of sunshine, the first drop of water.

Through this interaction, a fundamental belief about the world is imprinted in the baby’s subconscious: “My feelings will be seen. My expressions will be responded to. I am safe, I am loved.”

His seed is affirmed. It begins to break ground, sprouting its first invisible, tiny shoot.

But what if this cry is met with something else?

With prolonged, icy silence. With an empty room where no one pays attention. Or worse, with an impatient voice, roughly scolding: “What are you crying for! So noisy!”

After a few times, this infant, this tiny survival expert, smarter than any adult, will learn another version of the truth about the world: “My feelings are useless, they annoy others, and they might even bring danger.”

To adapt to this terrifying truth, what will he do?

He will stop sowing seeds.

He will slowly, slowly forget that seed he held in his hand, the one that had the chance to grow into a towering tree. He might even feel that his palm had always been empty.

He didn’t put on “noise-cancelling headphones” later. He might not have even learned how to turn on the radio from the beginning. That internal circuit of “feeling, expressing, responding, connecting” might never have been successfully established.

This is the issue of “attachment” that developmental psychology has discussed for half a century. If a child’s emotions are not consistently “attuned” to by caregivers in the first few years of life, their capacity for empathy will struggle to be truly “activated.”

These two “dry wells” appear similar, but their underlying mechanisms are entirely different.

Ah Wei’s “dry well” is “defensive.” He knows what emotions are, he has even felt them, and precisely because he has felt the pain emotions bring, he built high walls. His inner world is a heavily guarded ruin, burying his past wounds.

The “dry well” we discuss in this chapter is “developmental.” His inner world might not be a ruin, but a truly uncultivated wasteland. There are no wounds there because nothing ever happened. He is not unwilling to empathize; he simply doesn’t know what it is. Asking him to feel your feelings is like asking him to recall a dream he never had.

This, perhaps, is the deeper tragedy. Because for someone wearing headphones, you at least have hope—perhaps one day, he will be willing to try and take them off.

But for someone holding a forgotten, never-sprouted seed in his hand, how do you tell him that he could have had an entire garden?

Chapter Three: The Price of Kindness

Up to this point, we’ve seemingly been saying that empathy is a good thing, and losing it is a tragedy. We sympathize with Ah Wei, who wears “noise-cancelling headphones,” and we lament the stranger who holds a “forgotten seed” in their hand.

This seems to imply that if a person’s empathy is strong enough, their life must be filled with warmth and connection, and they must be a socially adept genius.

But is it really that simple?

If a lack of empathy means living in an emotional wasteland, do people with too much empathy live in paradise?

I want to tell you a harsh truth: quite the opposite. They might live in another kind of hell, a hell composed of flowers and applause that outsiders cannot comprehend.

Empathy is like a radio. What happens if this radio’s antenna is too sensitive? It receives all channels from around the world, good and bad, as its own signals. In the past, this might not have been a big problem. But in today’s era, it’s a non-stop, twenty-four-hour catastrophe.

You open your phone, and on social media, there are the heartbreaking midnight monologues of strangers with depression; in your news feed, there are displaced families from distant war zones with empty eyes; you just want to watch a funny video to relax, but the comment section is a boiling pot of rage and curses. You turn off your phone and walk into the office, and your overly sensitive antenna can clearly “hear” the suppressed anxiety of your cubicle mate about their mortgage and their child’s school admissions.

At first, you might still feel heartbroken by every tragedy, shedding tears for every pain. You feel you should do something. You donate to charities, you debate online all night, you try to comfort every friend who confides in you. You feel like a small but dedicated hero.

But you’ll soon find that your emotional reserves, like a battery with countless small holes, are being depleted at an alarming rate. You become an empty shell, filled with helplessness and guilt—because you know the world’s suffering is endless, you can’t empathize with it all, let alone help it all. You find that you comfort one friend, and ten more are in line; you help one child, and thousands more are suffering.

Finally, to keep yourself from going completely mad, to live normally, you have to consciously or unconsciously turn down the sensitivity of your antenna.

You learn to quickly scroll past content that makes you uncomfortable, you learn to ignore some pleas for help, you learn to mentally put up a barrier when friends confide in you.

See how ironic this is. A person with excessive empathy ultimately has to actively move towards the opposite of empathy—numbness and detachment—for self-protection. He, too, ultimately puts on a pair of “noise-cancelling headphones” for himself. Only his headphones are not to resist childhood trauma, but to resist this overly noisy, heartbreaking present.

This leads to a crucial point, often overlooked by us “good Samaritans”:

Healthy empathy is never a flooding, indiscriminate torrent meant to drown oneself completely. It must, and necessarily does, include the wisdom of “boundaries.”

A truly empathetic person is not a giant trash can passively absorbing all negative emotions. He is more like an excellent diver.

He has the ability to put on the most professional diving suit and dive deep into the cold ocean of another’s emotions. He is willing to feel the pressure, darkness, and turbulent currents there, willing to stay with the drowning person for a while.

But he also clearly knows that the oxygen tank on his back has a limited capacity. He knows when he has reached his limit. He knows when he must surface, must return to his own small boat, take off his soaked diving suit, bask in the sun, drink hot water, and replenish his energy.

He can dive down and surface. He can connect and separate.

This ability to freely switch between “involvement” and “detachment” is the highest and healthiest state of empathy. It doesn’t make you callous; it allows you to maintain kindness and compassion without being swallowed by the suffering of others. This is sustainable kindness.

The ancient Romans figured this out two thousand years ago. Stoic philosophers pursued a state called “Apatheia” (tranquility of mind). That wasn’t “indifference” as we understand it today, but an inner strength, achieved through rigorous rational training, that freed oneself from being enslaved by intense emotions (especially fear and anxiety stemming from others). You can offer help to others, but you don’t have to fully internalize their pain as your own.

It’s like installing a “pressure regulating valve” for your mind. While extending goodwill outwards, you ensure that your internal pressure doesn’t rise to an explosive level.

Unfortunately, this “selfish” wisdom, in today’s culture that promotes “selfless dedication,” is often misunderstood by us as a shameful flaw to be overcome. We always feel that a good person should burn themselves to light up others.

But we forget that when a candle burns out, only a puddle of wax remains. And a puddle of wax lights up nothing.

Part Two: Fossils in the Museum

Chapter Four: The Anatomy of Empathy

Up to this point, we seem to have been wallowing in the mire of personal feelings. We’ve talked about childhood trauma, the helplessness of growing up, and the cost of kindness. But we seem to have overlooked a fundamental question.

Namely, what exactly is this “empathy” we’ve been discussing for so long?

Is it merely “feeling what others feel”? If so, then the “good Samaritan” overwhelmed by a flood of empathy, and the “hunter” who can precisely sense your emotions to manipulate you, both seem to possess top-tier empathy. But this is clearly incorrect; our intuition strongly protests.

To untangle this mess, we must temporarily step out of personal stories, and like a calm, even somewhat cold, scientist, prepare a sharper “conceptual scalpel.” Fortunately, psychologists have already provided us with this set of tools. They have clearly dissected the seemingly monolithic, vague concept of “empathy” into three distinct, yet interconnected and independent components.

Understanding the distinction between these three is the only key to understanding why we fall into the “hunting ground” predicament.

• The first layer is “Cognitive Empathy.”

Simply put, it means “I understand what you mean.”

This is a purely intellectual ability. It refers to my capacity to accurately comprehend your thoughts, infer your intentions, and see through the logic behind your actions. It’s like having a map of your inner world; I know your mountains represent your pride, your rivers your sorrow, and your forests your hidden secrets.

An excellent negotiator, a top salesperson, a brilliant psychologist—they all must possess strong cognitive empathy. They can quickly grasp your point, understand your situation, and make you feel “you really get me.”

However, please note that this entire process can be completely devoid of any emotion.

My ability to read your map doesn’t mean I care whether you live or die. I can even use this map to destroy you more efficiently.

This is the core weapon of those cold “hunters.” They possess top-tier, high-definition, military-grade cognitive empathy maps. They can precisely analyze your every expression, interpret your every word choice, and predict your every decision. But they do this not to love you, but to hunt you.

• The second layer is “Affective Empathy.”

This is what we commonly understand as “feeling what someone else feels.”

It means “I can feel your feelings.” I not only understand your map, but when I walk by your “River of Sorrow,” I also feel a biting chill; when I stand atop your “Mountain of Pride,” I also experience that feeling of exhilaration. This is a “resonance” between hearts, a contagion of emotions.

When we cry at the sacrifice of a hero in a movie, or when we are genuinely happy for a friend’s good news, what we experience is affective empathy. This is the foundation for us to build deep emotional connections with others.

But as we discussed in the previous chapter, excessive, unbounded affective empathy is a disaster. Those “good Samaritans” overwhelmed by a flood of empathy were consumed because their emotional resonance chambers were too sensitive and they didn’t know how to turn them off, ultimately being drained dry by the world’s signals of pain.

• The third layer, and the most important and advanced, is “Empathic Concern,” or “Compassion.”

It means “I care about your suffering and want to do something for you.”

See, this is a choice, an intention to act.

I look at your map filled with sorrow, I feel that chilling resonance with you, and then, I decide that I want to build a bridge over your river; I want to offer you a blanket for your cold.

This “decision” is the most crucial.

Now, everything is clear.

That “dry well” that drains you might be very weak in all three abilities. They neither understand your map nor feel your temperature, naturally, they cannot do anything for you.

That “good Samaritan” who drowns himself possesses strong affective empathy; he can feel your pain, perhaps even more than you do. But he might lack sufficient cognitive empathy (unable to see the essence of the problem) and empathic concern (doesn’t know how to effectively offer help, only cries along with you).

And that “hunter” who sends shivers down your spine possesses top-tier cognitive empathy (the map) but not an ounce of affective empathy (resonance) or empathic concern (the bridge). He understands you precisely to better exploit you. His existence perfectly proves that cognitive empathy itself is a neutral tool, capable of both good and evil.

What we truly seek, that ideal, healthy, powerful empathy, is a state where all three are present and in dynamic balance.

It requires us to have both the “intellect” to understand the map, the “compassion” to feel the temperature, and the “wisdom” and “courage” to choose whether and how to build a bridge.

This is too difficult. It’s almost an anti-human requirement.

It requires us, when facing the suffering of others, to allow ourselves to “get into character,” to feel that real emotional connection; and also to be able to “step out of character” at any time, to retreat to a relatively objective position to think “what exactly happened” and “what can I do.”

This also means that a truly empathetic person is not a “saint” who is infinitely open to everyone and feels all their emotions. They are a clear-headed practitioner who has mastered the dynamic balance between “connection” and “boundaries.”

They know when to dive enthusiastically into the deep sea to feel the warmth of another soul; and they know when to calmly return to shore, raise the drawbridge, and guard their own castle.

They know that kindness, if it does not simultaneously include wisdom and strength, will ultimately either harm oneself or harm those they wish to help.

Chapter Five: Echoes of History

With this sharp conceptual scalpel in hand, we seem to be able to diagnose our era’s “emotional syndrome” more clearly. But if we pull our gaze away from the present and cast it into the deeper river of history, we will realize with alarm that everything we face today—whether the indifference of the “dry well,” the calculation of the “hunting ground,” or the overflow of the “flood”—is nothing new.

They are merely contemporary variations of ancient echoes.

We thought we were discussing a modern psychological problem, but in reality, we are merely replaying a millennia-long, ancient debate about the truth of human nature.

Let’s go back to China more than two thousand years ago.

At that time, during the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, intellectual sparks collided more intensely than any online debate we have today. Among them, the most profound divergence within Confucianism concerned the origin of “human nature.”

Mencius, an idealistic and passionate thinker, proposed a view that sounds remarkably familiar to us today. He said, “Humans all have an unbearable heart,” meaning everyone is inherently unable to bear seeing others suffer. He gave an example that has been passed down for centuries: a child is about to fall into a well. Any person, no matter who they are, upon seeing this, will immediately feel alarm and compassion (“the heart of commiseration and shame”).

Mencius emphasized that you have this feeling not to curry favor with the child’s parents, not to gain a good reputation among villagers, and certainly not because you dislike the child’s crying. It is an instinctive, irresistible, and purest form of goodwill.

Is this not the seed of what we today call “affective empathy” and “empathic concern”? Mencius believed that this “heart of commiseration,” along with the “heart of shame and dislike,” the “heart of deference and compliance,” and the “heart of right and wrong,” were our factory settings as “humans.” They were the four “beginnings” of “goodness,” four precious seeds. But he also emphasized that having the seeds alone is useless; you must cultivate and “expand and fulfill” them through postnatal learning and self-cultivation to allow them to grow into the towering trees of “benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom.”

However, another Confucian master, Xunzi, put forward a completely opposite view.

Xunzi, a more calm, realistic, and pessimistic thinker, believed that human nature is “inherently evil.” He thought that humans are born self-interested, jealous, and full of various desires. Without postnatal education and the restraint of ritual (which he called “wei,” meaning artificial transformation), human society would fall into endless struggle and chaos.

Xunzi’s theory sounds rather unappealing. But he precisely pointed out a cold reality: merely having that seed of the “heart of commiseration” is far from enough. In a world of limited resources and constant conflict, if everyone acted solely on instinct, the result would inevitably be disastrous. He saw the potential for the abuse of “cognitive empathy” and how unrestrained desires could easily overwhelm that fragile bit of goodwill.

See, this debate between the “goodness of human nature” and the “evil of human nature,” which has lasted for over two millennia, precisely echoes our current dilemmas. Should we believe in the seed of goodness in human nature, or should we be wary of the selfish impulses within it?

History’s answer seems to be: both are right, and both are wrong.

Because history has repeatedly shown that when a society, an era, chooses to believe in and nurture the seed of “goodness,” civilization moves towards prosperity and tolerance. But when it chooses to exploit and amplify the impulse of “evil,” the world descends into hell.

Let’s shift our gaze from ancient China to 20th-century Europe.

The German philosopher Hannah Arendt, after observing the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, proposed a concept that shocked the world: “the banality of evil.”

Arendt discovered that Eichmann, the perpetrator who sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to gas chambers, was neither a sadist nor an inherent monster. He was just an ordinary, utterly unremarkable bureaucrat. He was polite, devoted to his family, worked diligently, and everything he did was merely “doing his duty,” efficiently executing orders from his superiors.

Why was he able to commit such heinous crimes with such a clear conscience?

Because he had lost the capacity for empathy. More precisely, his empathetic ability was systematically and completely destroyed by the entire Nazi propaganda machine and bureaucratic system.

The Nazi propaganda machine, day after day, depicted Jews as “non-human” – they were “viruses,” “pests,” an “inferior race” that needed to be eliminated. This continuous, high-intensity indoctrination was like a nationwide “tidal lake stench.” Over time, ordinary German citizens within it, including Eichmann, had their perceptual systems warped to adapt to this toxic environment.

They no longer saw the Jews sent to the trains as fellow human beings, like themselves, who could cry, laugh, and feel pain. Their “affective empathy” was completely severed. They were left with only a twisted “cognitive empathy” – they knew how to most efficiently “process” these “packages,” but they felt no pain for these “packages.”

Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil” is the most profound insight into this state. It tells us that the most terrifying evil is not committed by monstrous fiends. Instead, it is committed collectively by countless ordinary people who have lost their capacity for empathy, abandoned independent thought, and transformed themselves into cold, order-executing machines.

This wall that separates empathy, once amplified to a collective level, leads to catastrophic consequences. Individual “dry wells” converge into a collective “wasteland.”

History is a mirror; it reflects our present dilemmas and stores the wisdom of our predecessors. Empathy is the emotional bond that sustains human society, but this bond is both resilient and fragile. It stems from nature, is cultivated through education, and can also be destroyed by the environment. By observing its rise and fall throughout history, we can more profoundly understand how crucial and arduous it is to protect our fragile capacity for empathy in an era like today, which is also filled with propaganda, prejudice, and dehumanizing rhetoric.

Chapter Six: The Gaze of the Machine

From ancient Chinese philosophical debates to the collective trauma of 20th-century Europe, we seem to have been revolving within a human world, composed of flesh and blood. But we must admit that the world we inhabit today is a completely transformed, half-human, half-divine “new world.”

The god of this new world is technology.

We once naively believed that the internet, that great invention that broke down all physical barriers, would lead humanity into an unprecedented golden age of mutual understanding. We thought that more connection would inevitably bring more empathy.

This idea, today, seems almost like a joke.

What we got was not a global village, but a giant “online Tower of Babel” divided by countless invisible walls. We speak the same language but cannot understand each other. And technology, the god we once worshipped, is quietly reshaping our ability to perceive each other, staring at us with a gaze we cannot comprehend, cold and unfeeling.

It has tailor-made new, terrifyingly efficient “dry wells” and “hunting grounds” for our era.

The “Dry Well” of Algorithms

Have you ever had this experience? On a social media platform, you glance at a video about a certain viewpoint, and for the next week, your feed is flooded with different versions of content supporting that very viewpoint.

The algorithm, the most powerful “information distributor” of our time, exists for one sole purpose: to keep you “addicted,” to make you stay on its platform for as long as possible. And its way of pleasing you is terrifyingly simple and crude: it only shows you what you want to see, and only lets you hear what you want to hear.

It has created an incredibly comfortable, warm “information cocoon” for you, filled with echoes. In this cocoon, all your views are confirmed countless times; all your preferences are infinitely satisfied. You feel like you’re the center of the world; you feel your thoughts are the truth.

This is the digital “dry well” that algorithms have meticulously dug for us.

We are immersed in it every day, speaking into this well, and hearing only our own echoes, amplified countless times. We feel good, we feel incredibly right.

But what’s the cost?

The cost is that we slowly lose the ability to understand different voices. When we occasionally see a viewpoint outside our cocoon that contradicts ours, our first reaction is no longer “Why would they think that?” but rather “This person must be an idiot, right?”

We no longer see people who disagree with us as complex, flesh-and-blood individuals like ourselves, with different life experiences. We only see them as “erroneous data” that needs to be corrected, “online pests” that need to be eliminated.

The algorithm, this meticulously attentive “housekeeper,” is systematically and silently castrating one of our most precious empathetic abilities—the ability to coexist with dissenters—in the name of “making you comfortable.”

The “Hunting Ground” of Big Data

If the algorithm’s “dry well” makes us increasingly deaf, then the big data “hunting ground” makes us increasingly transparent, increasingly “huntable.”

The “hunter” we discussed earlier still needed to chat with you to laboriously map your “inner landscape.” Today, this “hunter” has evolved into an omniscient, omnipresent, data-driven behemoth.

Every click, every pause, every search, every purchase you make, paints a pixel-perfect, high-definition “desire map” of you for this behemoth.

It knows your weaknesses better than you do.

If you’ve recently searched “how to relieve anxiety,” it will immediately push various paid knowledge courses to you, telling you “your anxiety is just because you’re not trying hard enough.” It uses your anxiety to sell deeper anxiety.

If you’ve just gone through a breakup and are in an emotionally vulnerable state, it will push various “love reconciliation gurus” to you, teaching you “techniques” and “strategies” to win back love. It uses your heartbreak to sell false hope.

This data “hunter” possesses the top-tier “cognitive empathy” we dissected earlier. It can precisely see through all your thoughts and vulnerabilities. But it does so with only one goal: to turn you into a “user profile” that can be predicted, guided, and consumed.

Each of us is like a pathetic, plucked lamb, naked, running across this vast, boundless hunting ground of data. And the hunter, unhurriedly, sits in the cloud, adjusting its scope.

Performative Empathy

In this digital wasteland, we have also invented a new “ritual” for pretending we are still connected—performative empathy.

When a public event occurs, social media immediately floods with a tsunami of formatted “candles” and “prayers.” When a celebrity dies, everyone in their WeChat Moments will repost the same song they’ve never actually listened to, accompanied by a few copied-and-pasted, profound-sounding eulogies.

We are eager to express our “empathy,” not because we truly feel anything, but because we are afraid that if we don’t express it, we will be seen by the group as a “cold person.”

Empathy, from a heartfelt, private feeling, has transformed into a public, “politically correct” performance that needs likes and shares.

We are addicted to this cheap, almost zero-cost “online empathy.” It creates a moral illusion that “we’ve already done something.” Then, we can contentedly turn off our phones and continue to ignore the living colleagues, friends, or family members beside us who genuinely need help.

Because real empathy is too much trouble. It requires us to invest time, expend energy, and even confront some complex and heavy things we’d rather not face.

But lighting a candle only takes one second.

Technology, this new god, did not promise us a better world. It only promised us a more convenient one.

And we, for this “convenience,” are unknowingly surrendering the most precious and fragile part of being “human.”

Part Three: Dancing on the Ruins

Chapter Seven: Dancing with the Inner “Wall”: A Clumsy Self-Repair Manual

Alright, after all this talk about theories, metaphors, and dilemmas, we ultimately return to the most practical question: what now? What should we do?

If I’ve become accustomed to wearing “noise-cancelling headphones,” if my “empathy muscles” have long atrophied, if I keep oscillating between the “dry well” and the “hunting ground,” is there still hope?

The answer is, yes.

But please don’t expect me to give you any magic pills or a “three steps to becoming an emotional intelligence master” quick guide. That’s not the purpose of this article.

Repairing empathy is more like a long, inevitably repetitive and frustrating physical therapy. It requires immense patience and courage to re-exercise those muscles that have long atrophied, or that you’ve even forgotten existed.

The following are not authoritative psychological tutorials; they are more like a personal exercise manual I’ve compiled from my own practice. It’s still being revised, but at least, it’s real.

Exercise One: Becoming an Archaeologist of Your Own Mind

A person who cannot hear the alarms from their own body naturally cannot hear others’. Therefore, the beginning of all practice must be turning inward. It’s about learning to hear clearly how noisy the radio in your own head is.

The simplest and most effective way is to write it down.

I don’t care if you call it a diary, notes, or an “emotional trash can.” Find a completely private place that no one will ever see (whether it’s a physical notebook or an encrypted computer document). When you once again feel stuck, overwhelmed, or annoyed by some emotion, try to write these things down like a calm archaeologist documenting a “crime scene”:

1. “Excavated Artifacts”: What exactly happened? (Please describe in the most objective, emotionless language. For example, don’t write “My boss deliberately targeted me again today,” but rather: “During the afternoon meeting, when the boss was summarizing, he didn’t mention the part I was responsible for.”)

2. “First Layer of Soil”: What was my first reaction in my head? (This refers to those “automatic thoughts” that pop up without thinking. For example: “He must be unhappy with me. My project is doomed. Am I going to be fired? I’m such a failure.” Write down these most malicious, catastrophic thoughts verbatim.)

3. “Second Layer of Soil”: What did my body feel like? (Emotions are ultimately bodily reactions. Carefully scan your body. For example: “My stomach felt like it was punched, tightly clenched. My back started to feel cold, my heart was racing, as if it wanted to jump out of my throat. I felt a little breathless.”)

4. “Excavation Behavior”: What did I finally do? (To cope with this discomfort, what actions did you take? For example: “I spent the entire afternoon frantically browsing shopping websites, buying a bunch of useless things. Then when I got home at night, I ordered a super-sized fried chicken and ate until I felt sick.”)

Initially, this exercise will be very painful. Because it forces you to directly confront those most unbearable thoughts and feelings that you’ve been trying to escape in various ways (e.g., scrolling on your phone, overeating, throwing yourself into frantic work).

But please persist.

After a few days of persistence, you will, like a true archaeologist, discover a startling secret: your seemingly complex, ever-changing, unfathomable inner drama actually has a rather monotonous script. The things that make you lose emotional control are just a few core thoughts that come and go (e.g., “I’m not good enough,” “I’ll be abandoned,” “I messed everything up”).

Seeing it is the first step to dismantling it. When you can clearly write it on paper, you have already quietly transformed from the “person” overwhelmed by emotion to the “observer” holding the notebook.

You and your emotions have created a centimeter of distance.

And that centimeter is the beginning of freedom.

Exercise Two: Name Your “Inner Critic”

Through the first exercise, you will gradually become familiar with the voice that always criticizes, attacks, and judges you in your head.

Now, let’s do something that sounds a bit silly, but is very effective: give this voice a name.

You can call him “Judge Dredd,” or “Commissar Comrade,” or “Ms. Perfectionist.” You can give him a vivid, even somewhat comical nickname based on what he says most often.

For example, I call my own voice the “Bullet Commenter.” Because it’s like the most venomous, fault-finding bullet comments on a video website; no matter what I do, it will provide live commentary. If I write an article, it will say, “What kind of garbage is this, the logic is flawed, no one will read it.” If I go to the gym, it will say, “Look at your muscles, they’re nothing compared to others, it’s useless to even try.”

Why do this?

Because when you name it, you accomplish a crucial “role separation.”

Next time, when that voice starts buzzing in your head again, you can stop treating it as “my” thought and, like an outsider, say to yourself, “Oh, look, ‘Bullet Commenter’ is on duty again.”

“I” am not that voice. I am the one who hears that voice.

This seemingly small shift has immense power. It changes you from the “defendant” being judged to the “audience” watching the judge perform on stage. You can still hear what he says, but his words will have significantly less destructive power over you. Because you know he’s just an automated, patterned program, an outdated “virus software” you installed in childhood.

He’s noisy, but he’s no longer you.

Exercise Three: Practice That Most Awkward Thing – “Self-Empathy”

This is the most important, and also the most difficult, of all exercises.

Because from childhood to adulthood, almost all the education we receive teaches us how to be “strict with ourselves.” We treat “self-criticism” as a virtue and “self-acceptance” as a shameful indulgence.

Therefore, practicing “self-empathy” will, at first, cause you extreme, physiological discomfort and awkwardness.

What exactly is “self-empathy”?

It’s not self-pity, not self-deception, and certainly not lying flat and indulging oneself.

It means, when you’ve messed up, when you’re in unbearable pain, when you feel like a failure, try to treat yourself as you would a good friend whom you truly care about and love.

Imagine your best friend has just gone through a terrible breakup, and he comes to you crying. What would you say to him?

You probably wouldn’t say, “What are you crying for! If you hadn’t been so dramatic, would you be in this situation today? Serves you right!”

You might say, “I know you must be in terrible pain right now. It’s okay, cry if you need to, I’m here for you. This isn’t your fault, you did your best. It will pass, we’ll figure it out together.”

Now, try to say these words to yourself, late at night, after you’ve messed something up (for example, an important presentation that you prepared for a long time but still stumbled through).

You can gently hug yourself, or just place a hand over your heart, and then, in the gentlest voice you can imagine, say to yourself: “I know you must be so disappointed right now, and you really want to curse yourself. But it’s okay. You tried so hard, you prepared for so long. It’s normal to be nervous; everyone makes mistakes. It’s no big deal; we’ll try again next time.”

I guarantee, the first time you do this, you’ll be so embarrassed your toes will curl. Your “Bullet Commenter” will immediately jump out and mock you at the top of its voice: “Are you crazy! Playing the victim! You’re just pathetic!”

It’s okay. Let it speak.

You just need to practice this, clumsily, clumsily, again and again.

Why do this?

Because a person who cannot empathize with themselves, all the empathy they give outwards might be distorted, unhealthy. The reason they are good to others might not be because they genuinely care about others, but because they want to receive from others the “affirmation” they never dare to give themselves. They will become a “people-pleaser,” a “rescuer,” a “good Samaritan” who cannot refuse anyone.

Their kindness will become their heaviest burden.

Therefore, we must start with ourselves.

First, learn to gently embrace that scarred, imperfect self who always messes things up.

First, learn to empathize with ourselves.

This is the hardest, and also the most compassionate, lesson in our empathy course. Because you first have to take care of your own wasteland before you can have the surplus energy to offer a flower in someone else’s garden.

Chapter Eight: Dancing with the “Walls” of Others: Clear Connection and Firm Boundaries

When we, through those clumsy exercises, begin to learn to reconcile with our inner noise and embrace ourselves, we seem to gain a little extra courage to face this more complex and exhausting external world.

We are, after all, social animals; we cannot live in isolation. We are bound to, and desire to, build connections with others.

But we will soon discover that the outside world is a hundred times more chaotic than our own inner world. Because each of us carries our own unique, scarred “inner ruin” as we encounter others.

We are like a group of snails, carefully moving in the dark, each carrying their own house. We long to get close to each other, yet fear being pierced by the other’s hard shell.

So, what should we do?

Step One: Upgrade Your “Radar System”

Before learning how to “dance together,” you must first learn how to “diagnose.” You need to roughly determine what kind of dance partner you have in front of you. What material is that “wall” made of that makes you uncomfortable?

From our previous discussions, we can at least roughly divide these “walls” into two types:

1. “Wall of Defense”: Behind this wall is a wounded, highly vigilant soul. This might be Ah Wei, wearing his “noise-cancelling headphones,” whom we discussed in Chapter One. He doesn’t not want to connect; he’s just too afraid of being hurt again. His indifference is a form of self-protection. This wall is made of ice; it seems hard, but if you have enough patience and warmth, it might be able to melt.

2. “Wall of Logic”: Behind this wall might be someone we discussed in Chapter Two, whose “seed” never sprouted. In their world, the dimension of emotion might be missing, or its priority is extremely low. Their actions are driven purely by logic, rules, and cost-benefit analysis. This wall is made of reinforced concrete, impregnable. Don’t expect to melt it.

Of course, real people are far more complex than these two classifications. Many are a mix of both. But having a basic “diagnostic radar” can help you avoid many unnecessary, futile attempts.

Step Two: Choose Your “Dance Moves”

After diagnosing, you need to choose different dance moves based on different dance partners. Remember, your goal is not to become a “king of the ball” who saves everyone. Your goal is to make yourself less tired and less stifled in this dance.

Dancing with the “Wall of Defense”:

If your radar tells you that the other person’s coldness is mostly due to fear and defense, then your dance move’s keyword should be: “Reduce Threat.”

Your goal is not to melt them with your enthusiasm; that will only burn them and make them retreat faster. Your goal is to make them feel that you are “harmless,” that you are safe.

So, please abandon all accusatory, emotional expressions.

Instead of “Why are you always so cold! Do you even care about me?” Change to: “When you don’t speak, I feel a bit uneasy and overthink things. Can I know what you’re thinking?”

Instead of “You’re so hurtful!” Change to: “What you just said made me feel very sad.”

See the difference? The difference is that you are no longer using your feelings as a “weapon” to attack them. You are simply stating a “fact”—a fact about “your actions trigger certain feelings in me.”

This is very difficult. Very difficult. Because it requires you, even when you already feel hurt, to maintain the greatest possible rationality and restraint. This is almost anti-human.

And, I have to tell you an even more discouraging piece of news: doing this will, in all likelihood, still be of little use.

Because that ice wall is a fortification he had to build in the past few decades to survive. It wasn’t built for you; don’t flatter yourself. Your insignificant, cautious kindness is like trying to melt an iceberg with a cup of hot water.

But it’s the only way, possibly, for that tightly closed door to open a small crack for you.

You’re not fighting a person; you’re trying to soothe the overly vigilant “inner child” in their body that has long been terrified.

Dancing with the “Wall of Logic”:

If your radar tells you that you are facing someone who seems completely unable to understand emotions, who only recognizes logic and rules.

Then, please, immediately, stop all efforts to make them “feel your feelings.”

This is like reciting Shakespearean sonnets to a computer; it will only waste your breath and emotion, with no result. You will only feel like an idiot.

Your communication style must switch to their channel.

Abandon all fantasies of “I thought you’d understand,” abandon all roundabout hints. Directly, clearly, like writing code, tell them the rules, bottom lines, and consequences.

“If you interrupt my speech again in the next meeting, I will immediately stop and ask you to finish first.” “I need you to be with me on my birthday. If you can’t, please tell me three days in advance, and I will make other arrangements.” “I need you to spend at least one evening each week, putting work aside, and focusing on the children. This is our shared responsibility as parents. We can decide now whether it’s Wednesday or Thursday.”

You’re not discussing feelings with them; you’re inputting an “IF…THEN…” program.

Because this might be the only instruction they can correctly understand and execute.

It sounds sad and unromantic. But it’s a million times more effective than crying and yelling at a reinforced concrete wall, asking “Why don’t you love me?”

Step Three: Establish Your Own “Border Line”

This is the most important, and also the most courageous, step in all dance moves.

You can try to understand, you can try to connect, you can carefully perform those most awkward dance steps.

But you are not obligated to save someone who does not want to be saved. You are even less obligated to warm up a piece of ice with your own body temperature that will never get warm.

When a relationship, no matter how hard you try, how much you adjust your dance steps, brings you only continuous, endless depletion, frustration, and self-doubt, you must possess and bravely use your right to “exit the dance floor.”

This is not selfishness; this is not failure.

This is “self-empathy.”

Your inner world is your territory. Your energy is your most precious, limited resource. You have the right to erect a huge sign on your border line, clearly stating: “Those who drain me, belittle me, or disrespect me are forbidden entry. Otherwise, consequences will be borne by themselves.”

Protecting your own energy and boundaries is the most difficult and most compassionate lesson in learning empathy.

Because a person who cannot set boundaries for themselves, their kindness is like a reservoir without a dam.

It will ultimately either drown others or drain themselves dry.

Chapter Nine: Planting Gardens in the Cracks

We’ve talked about dissecting ourselves and maneuvering with others. But all of this remains at the level of “technique.” They are like survival skills on ruins, keeping us from being crushed by falling bricks, but they cannot make new life grow from the rubble.

We will eventually ask: what then? Are we destined to live forever so cautiously, so guardedly?

Where else can we find that safe soil where the seed of empathy can sprout again?

The answer is, yes, it exists.

This soil is not in grand social structures, nor in the cold digital world. It is hidden in the most ancient, most minute, and often overlooked “micro-ecosystems” around us.

Family: The Unchosen First Soil

We cannot choose our birth family; it’s like we cannot choose our genes. If your first patch of soil was saline-alkali land, or even a “toxic waste dump,” that is not your fault. All your struggles with empathy and connection as an adult stem from this.

In this chapter, we won’t discuss how to “fix” your original family. That’s too vast and complex a topic, often requiring professional psychological intervention. And frankly, many times, “fixing” isn’t possible. All you can do is what we discussed in the previous chapter: establish your “border line” and protect yourself.

What we want to discuss is what you might do, if you are fortunate or unfortunate enough to be forming a new family, becoming the “first patch of soil” for another seed, to break this cycle.

Perhaps the most important thing is just one: seriously address your child’s emotions.

When a child cries and throws a tantrum because they can’t have a toy they want, what do we usually do?

We stop them: “Don’t cry! If you keep crying, Mommy won’t like you!” We reason with them: “You already have so many toys, why are you still so greedy?” We distract them: “Don’t cry, don’t cry, look, there’s a little bird!”

These all send the same message to the child: “Your feelings are unimportant, wrong, and need to be suppressed.”

Unintentionally, we are personally installing the first part of “noise-cancelling headphones” onto the child’s softest heart.

So, what’s the correct way?

It’s to squat down, look them in the eye, and then, name their emotion.

“Are you feeling really angry and disappointed right now? Because you really wanted that red car, but Mommy didn’t buy it for you, and you feel very sad, right?”

See, you didn’t judge them, you didn’t negate them; you simply, like a mirror, clearly reflected their messy emotions that they themselves couldn’t understand.

The moment their emotions are “seen” and “named” by you, a miracle happens. Their surging emotional flood, which was almost destroying them, will slowly subside as if finding an outlet. More importantly, an incredibly precious seed will be planted in their subconscious: “My feelings are real, they are allowed, they are seen.”

This is the most primitive and important way to cultivate empathy.

Friendship: The Empathy Gym

If we say that family is our unchosen “factory setting,” then friendship is the “empathy gym” we choose for ourselves as adults.

I’m not talking about the kind of “social relationship” where you’re drinking buddies or liking each other’s posts on WeChat. I’m talking about that kind of genuine friendship where you can expose your most unbearable, most pathetic, most unspeakable side to them, and you trust that you won’t be ridiculed or abandoned for it.

Such friendship, in today’s fast-paced, utilitarian age, is rarer than giant pandas.

But it is the most important place for us to repair our empathetic abilities.

Because in a sufficiently safe friendship, we can do something high-risk but immensely rewarding: practice vulnerability.

We can try to take off the heavy masks we wore all day outside, and then say to that trusted friend, “Man, I might be falling apart a bit lately.”

Then, observe what happens.

If the other person starts giving you a bunch of “you need to be strong,” “it’s no big deal” platitudes, well, then they might just be a good “colleague,” but not the partner who can help you “train.”

But if they just listen quietly, then awkwardly pat your shoulder and say, “Damn, that sounds exhausting. Come on, let’s go grab a drink.”

Then, congratulations. You’ve found a valuable “personal trainer” who can stretch and nourish your long-atrophied “empathy muscle.”

In such relationships, we can practice both how to “express” our feelings and how to “receive” others’ feelings. We confirm, again and again, that exposing vulnerability doesn’t necessarily lead to danger; it can also lead to connection.

Art and Literature: The Safest Simulators

Family and friendship require real interaction and come with real risks. But there’s another way to expand our empathetic boundaries in an absolutely safe environment.

That is, to read novels, watch movies, and listen to music that seems completely unrelated to our lives.

Why?

Because a great work of fiction is the ultimate “empathy simulator.”

When we read “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” we are able to delve into the magical town of Macondo and feel the destined, inescapable loneliness of seven generations of a family. This loneliness might be something we never experience in our lives, but through Márquez’s words, we “experience” it.

When we watch the movie “Shoplifters,” we are able to enter that “family” formed by social outcasts, who are not blood relatives, and feel the kind of shared warmth between them that is deeper and yet more fragile than blood ties.

When we listen to Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5,” even if we don’t understand any music theory, we can hear in those four famous notes a defiant struggle that grasps fate by the throat.

These great works forcibly pull us out of our own petty, self-pitying little worlds. They allow us to enter and live through the life experiences of another person, another era, or even another species.

Every such “immersive experience” expands the boundaries of our inner map. Areas on our map that were never lit up become illuminated, one by one, by these stories and melodies.

Perhaps we still can’t truly understand the colleague or neighbor beside us who is completely different from us.

But because we have lived a life similar to theirs in a book, perhaps we can have a little more—even if just one bit more—curiosity and tolerance for them.

This is the greatest and most irreplaceable function of art.

In those seemingly “useless,” fictional joys and sorrows, it preserves for us the last possibility of becoming a more complete, richer, and more compassionate person.

Conclusion: Dancing on the Ruins, Learning to Dance

So, where is the endpoint of this long, 50,000-word journey about empathy?

I think an endpoint might not exist.

Writing that sentence brings me a tremendous, relief-like lightness.

Because it means there isn’t a “completely healed” perfect state waiting for us ahead. There isn’t a script for an “emotional intelligence master” who is effortlessly adept with everyone and immune to all harm, a role we need to play.

The endpoint, perhaps, is more like a wisdom of coexisting with ruins.

Most of our inner worlds are not grand, spotless palaces. They are more like old, crumbling houses that have survived explosions, fires, and floods. Walls still bear scorch marks, broken rubble lies beneath the floorboards, and when it rains, some forgotten corners might still leak.

We used to feel ashamed of this. We tried to cover those cracks with various fancy carpets learned from others. We pretended our house was sturdy and beautiful.

And now, perhaps we can learn to live with these cracks.

We practice empathy not to make the cracks disappear. That’s impossible. We just want, through those clumsy, inward-exploring archaeological endeavors, to clearly see where these cracks actually are.

We practice boundaries not to nail shut all the doors and windows of our house, thereby isolating ourselves from the world. We just want to fix that rusted door lock, and then reclaim the right to decide “who can come in for a visit, who can only chat at the door, and who must be kept out forever.”

We will ultimately understand that a truly strong person is not someone whose inner world is unharmed. That’s not a human; that’s a god, or a monster.

A truly powerful person is someone who knows how to “dance with the cracks.”

They acknowledge their imperfections and allow others’ imperfections. In every clumsy attempt, they learn how to connect; in every weary retreat, they learn how to protect.

They are simply trying diligently to make the wasteland within themselves slowly grow its first blade of grass.

Returning to our original question: “Can we still hear each other?”

Perhaps the answer is: it’s hard, truly hard. But we can never give up trying.

Because the moment we give up trying, the most precious part of us as “humans” will also dim.

And all attempts, perhaps, begin with the smallest action, one that can start in the very next second:

Next time, when you see someone on social media express an opinion that you completely cannot understand, or even find a bit foolish.

Before you feel the urge to rush in and use your irrefutable logic and sense of justice to thoroughly refute them.

Please, pause for three seconds.

Then, try to ask yourself, in your mind, a question you might never have asked before:

“What kind of life experience would lead someone to say something like that?”

You don’t need to find the answer.

You just need to ask the question.

I think that’s enough.