While I once wrote about a pipe dream of a Marriage Museum, the   Empathy Museum already exists.  It has a library of books that I am curious about, all of which bring the audience into a place of compassion. Sounds like higher education to me. They offer a podcast called A Mile in My Shoes, in which you listen to the stories of people we might do well to understand. For the traveling exhibit you literally step into that person's shoes and walk. 

 

Empathy is the bridge that inverts isolation into community, narcissism into kindness. Recently I prayed about a relationship that had stalled. I was stuck in critical mode, and wanted out. I only saw a perfect life, and felt jealous.

 

Then I spent an hour with this person, and the bridge appeared below me as magically as the one beneath Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade. The bridge had been there all along, I just couldn't see it. 

 

We spoke about our struggles, and the criticism I had felt became as irrelevant as a heating pad in August. When you hear another person's narrative, empathy rises. 

 

I suspect that is why God is infinitely compassionate, because he knows us inside and out. 

 

 

It's counter intuitive really. We prop ourselves up as capable, infallible, strong, which creates a brick wall. But in admitting our flaws, the doors fly open.