Empathy is not a tone of voice. Empathy is not a mask that can be pulled on and off. Empathy is neither vapid nor intrusive. Empathy is a way of life, porous like a sieve. Your body is full of holes, and instead of covering and patching the holes, you invite others into the wounds, you allow the eddies and the flows that trap and drown other people to stream into you, through you. In this way, you sense, you feel, you begin to think, indeed, to live, differently.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are...