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The Questions We Ask When We Want to Empathize

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What can we do?

How can we help?

What is the right thing to say?

How can I measure that my intentions of love do not cause you pain?

How do I show my support while not seeming ignorant?

Help rid me of my ignorance.

Tell me how to ally, to defend, to fight for your cause. For our cause. For my cause is to know the cause.

I do not know your struggle. My struggle is not your struggle. My struggle will never be your struggle.

Struggles of struggling to know the struggle of you.

I will share mine. Yours will never be mine.

We empathize with the commonality that struggle is real. I do not wish my struggle among other people, I assume the same for you.

We must unify in that.

They are not the same and will never be the same.

I am better for knowing you.

I am enlightened by the life lived that is not my own.

I can learn from you, to better understand.

I will never live it, but I will see it.

I will remember that struggle, for I have struggled in a different way.

I will learn from opening my mind and heart to a struggle that is not mine.

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Thinkstock illustration by Anastasiya Kudryashova

Originally published: March 30, 2017
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