What empathy is not: imagining someone else’s pain, thinking about how you would feel in that situation and projecting that feeling on to another.

What empathy is: Love and the practice of abiding in love.

Empathy is love in action: listening carefully, paying attention, sitting alongside someone as they go through something. Saying to them, this isn’t my pain, it is yours and I am here with you for as long as it lasts. Today is not my day for sorrow, but I have known sorrow and will again, today is your time and I am here.