you feel.” It begins with the realization that you don’t know how another feels. In that ignorance, you begin with an offer of conversation: “Tell me how you feel.” Empathy, for Williams, is an offer of accompaniment and commitment. And making the offer changes you. When you have a growing awareness of how much you don’t know about someone else, you begin to understand how much you don’t know about yourself. You learn, says Williams, “a more demanding kind of attention. You learn patience and a new skill and habit of perspective.”
