Empathy could mean smiling and giving a cold bottle of water to people collecting signatures for a petition you would never sign—because it’s a sweltering day and you know what it’s like to be that hot, and you also know what it feels like to be that passionate about something you care about. It would not entail empty platitudes or white-lie niceties that we often say to people with whom we disagree; rather, it means finding a shared point of humanity through which to connect without sacrificing our integrity in the process.
