A Defense of Humanity’s Greatest Gift

I’ve been thinking about Montaigne lately, the way he wrote about cruelty—how he could feel so deeply into another being’s suffering that he couldn’t bear to watch even animals in distress. Five hundred years ago, this French philosopher understood something we’re in danger of forgetting: that our capacity to feel with others isn’t a flaw to overcome but a spiritual gift to cultivate.

Today I’m hearing voices everywhere telling me that empathy is weakness. Business leaders call it inefficient. Politicians dismiss it as naive sentiment. Podcasters and influencers mock it as bleeding-heart foolishness. They tell us that success belongs to the apathetic, that winners don’t waste time feeling other people’s pain. But when I listen to these voices, I hear the sound of people who have lost touch with their own souls.

I am what psychologists call a highly sensitive person—complicated, multi-layered, often misunderstood. When empathy assessments put me off the charts, I used to think there was something wrong with me. I’ve spent decades learning to see this sensitivity not as a burden but as what it truly is: a superpower that was being crushed by institutions that preferred compliance over compassion.

Montaigne wrote about how sympathy springs not from cold calculation but from natural inclination—our innate ability to “feel into” another’s experience. What he discovered, and what modern neuroscience confirms, is that empathy bridges the gap between separate human experiences, creating the very foundation upon which all ethical behavior rests.

The essence of good listening is empathy, which means suspending our preoccupation with ourselves and entering into the experience of another person. It’s part intuition, part effort—the stuff of human connection. When someone truly understands how we feel, our emotional burden is literally shared and thus lightened. This isn’t weakness; it’s the miraculous technology of human healing.

I think about those Tuesday morning mentoring meetings I held for a decade at Merridees Bakery in Franklin. Young artists would sit across from me, carrying wounds from institutions that had told them their sensitivity was a liability. What I witnessed in those sacred conversations was empathy creating the conditions where another human being could breathe, could remember who they were beneath all the shoulds and shouldn’ts.

Research shows that loneliness correlates with increased mortality comparable to the risks of smoking or obesity.

We are literally dying from lack of empathy.

Our bodies, not just our emotions, register the impact of disconnection. Communion—genuine connection with others—requires the very empathy that so many are telling us to abandon.

What Montaigne understood is that empathy is not sentimentality—it’s recognition. It’s the moment when we see through the illusion of separation and remember that the other person’s joy and suffering are fundamentally connected to our own. It’s the bridge that carries us out of the prison of self-absorption into the larger community of being.

When I practice empathy, I’m not being weak—I’m being human. I’m honoring the design that allows one consciousness to recognize and respond to another. I’m participating in the ancient technology that has allowed our species not just to survive but to create art, music, literature, and love.

What if the opposite of shame is not pride—it’s empathy. When we can feel into another person’s experience without judgment, we create the conditions where healing becomes possible. This is humanity’s highest achievement, our most spiritual gift.

In a world determined to convince us that feeling is weakness, I choose the stubbornly courageous path of remaining empathetic. Not because it makes me more successful by conventional standards, but because it makes me more alive, more connected, more grateful for the miraculous privilege of sharing this mysterious journey with other conscious beings.