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Empathy
That afternoon, it had been as though an unseen hand had drawn back a curtain and, for the briefest moment, I had seen through such a window. In a flash of “outsight” I had known timelessness and quiet ecstasy, sensed a truth of which mainstream science is merely a small fraction. And I knew that the revelation would be with me for the rest of my life, imperfectly remembered yet always within. A source of strength on which I could draw when life seemed harsh or cruel or desperate.” — Jane Goodall
“The self that we defend in isolation is just a shadow of our true self. And the connection that we make by attempting to merge with other people is just a fraction of our capacity for intimacy.
It is through inward contact with our own organism that we become capable of true contact with other people. We grow toward our true distance from other people and our true oneness with them at the same time. — Judith Blackstone
If there is one thing this pandemic is making abundantly clear it is that our individual health is interconnected — to each other, to our political and economic systems, to the broader ecology, and the other species we share the planet with. — Sunaura Taylor
The pandemic, after all, has made disturbingly visible that we are all only as healthy as our societal support systems. As the writer Anand Giridharadas put it: “Your health is as safe as…