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I’ve always wondered what the sensation of unfettered empathy is actually like. If we were somehow able to condense this peculiar experience of life of an individual—the culmination of all the reminiscences, all the emotional trauma, all the disparate fragments of memories, fears, hopes, frustrations, and desires—and for just a moment, just be another person—not vicariously, as we might through imagination, but actually tangibly comprehend the incomprehensibly complex sensation of living another life. This hypothetical scenario piques my interest because it is effectively a cheat code to the maddeningly difficult task of empathizing; as someone that tries with all their heart and mind to understand the feelings of others, to experience those feelings firsthand would constitute an unparalleled, almost unimaginable profundity of empathy.

As much as I am enthralled by such an idea, I remember that this act of navigating uncertainty in our relationships—the very circumstances created by not knowing what we each feel and think—lies at the heart of the human condition. As much as we despise misunderstanding, fear contempt, and dread conflict, we must remind ourselves constantly that these are indispensable components of stories that we build together. For as much as we might despise the notion of conflict without resolution, resolution without conflict makes even less sense.