Marcus often told himself that we're built for each other the way hands, feet, and eyelids are, made to cooperate, not collide. When someone frustrates you, it's easy to forget you share the same nature, the same struggles, the same short stretch of time. Sympatheia is the sense that we're parts of one whole. It doesn't mean letting people walk over you. It means meeting even a difficult person as a fellow human doing their flawed best, the way you are. That small shift, from enemy to fellow traveler, takes the heat out of a lot of conflicts before they start. We get through this together or not at all.

Inspired by the old idea of sympatheia. Written by Ugo Charles.