Empathy isn’t always easy. If I kept an empathy diary, it might look like this:

I’m sitting at the playground watching my daughter as she stands alone watching some kids she doesn’t know. She’s eager to play, but nervous to join in. She’s unsure of whether or not she will be accepted. My heart goes out to her easily, naturally. Empathy is built into me as a mother.

I walk down my block and see a man hanging over with the “heroin lean”. He looks pathetic and I have a mix of feelings: anger at the powerful people who caused the opioid epidemic; sorrow for this individual man who is suffering; fear that my neighborhood isn’t a safe place to be. Tapping into empathy is not hard in this situation, but it does take effort.

I sit at a restaurant with my husband for a rare date and the waitress is clearly pissed off. She doesn’t want to be there. I feel her anger directed towards us and my first instinct is to be defensive. Why is she angry with me? To feel empathy for her, I must mine my inner resources, which is difficult, but I eventually find a soft spot. I know what it feels like to be in pain and how easy it can be to take it out on others.

Collective empathy is withering. While I believe that empathy is important and powerful, it takes work and doesn’t always come easy. I continue to lean in – hard – into empathy. How else will our society have any hope of realizing a beautiful future?

Empathy means being able to understand and inhabit someone else’s inner world. In a way, it’s my job to think about it. While empathy impacts all areas of my life, it especially feeds my work as a creative. The people I partner with want to touch hearts and minds and build a more beautiful world. I want to be a part of this vision, and I also know that how I pursue this goal matters just as much as the goal itself. I try to approach things with curiosity and a willingness to feel what others feel.

Here's an example of bringing empathy down to the practical and granular level. I recently worked on a report about Medicaid with the Montana Healthcare Foundation. It’s a comprehensive and compelling 63-page document. The Foundation wanted to reach policymakers, so they decided to create a short infographic-style version.

As I began my work on the brief, I put myself in this policymaker’s shoes. I kept picturing a busy state senator, being pulled in a million directions. Her phone pings way too often and you can imagine her mind with an audible whir of an overheating computer fan. If this brief landed on her desk, I wanted it to be at first glance, a pleasure. Something that intrigues and invites her in. The information should be accessible. The data should be broken down in a way she can understand. It should show her that she can actually make a difference. The piece will ideally inspire her and give her a path to help make a positive change. It doesn’t scream at her or demand that she change. It is gentle and caring and interesting.

This is a small example, but I hope it shows how empathy can show up in small ways that have the potential to make a big difference. I invite you to consider the ways in which empathy can support the work that you do.

I’ll leave you with a quote by Maya Angelou:

“Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.”