A Kinder World Comes of Choosing Empathy

Most people know how to feel others’ pain—but they have to be motivated to actually do it

Empathy can spur us to actions that help our friends and community thrive. That makes promoting empathy a good strategy—in the home or the workplace.fizkes/Shutterstock

In the late 1990s, Najah Bazzy, a nurse in Dearborn, Michigan, made a house call to an Iraqi refugee family to check on their premature baby. When she arrived, she was shocked by how barren their home looked. The family had almost nothing: no stove, no fridge. The adults slept on the carpet. The baby—who’d gone home on a ventilator—was in a laundry basket, wrapped up in a towel.