The Mountain in the Sea

by Ray Nayler

“The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.”

“But what we did not render obsolete was the fear humans have of other minds.

Communication is communion. When we communicate with others, we take something from them into ourselves, and give them something of ours.

Are we trapped, then, in the world our language makes for us, unable to see beyond the boundaries of it? I say we are not. Anyone who has watched their dog dance its happiness in the sand and felt that joy themselves—anyone who has looked into a neighboring car and seen a driver there lost in thought, and smiled and seen the image of themselves in that person—knows the way out of the maze: Empathy. Identity with perspectives outside our own. The liberating, sympathetic vibrations of fellow-feeling. Only those incapable of empathy are truly caged.