Fifteen years ago, my peripheral neighborhood was the first one in Moscow to see an entirely new kind of a shopping mall being built. Developed by IKEA, it was the first mega-sized shopping center in the city featuring a hypermarket, an IKEA store, a movie theater, and tens of fashion boutiques and restaurants – all under the same roof. That would hardly seem a wonder in Europe or the U.S., but so it did here back in the day. Now we have lots of similar malls all over Moscow, but this one still feels special to me. Maybe because it’s in my neighborhood. Maybe because it’s related to a few emotionally significant events in my life. Maybe because such events continue to happen to me here, like this encounter I’m gonna tell you about now.

I have no idea what IKEA stores look like in North America. Here and elsewhere in Europe they all incorporate a nice self-service cafeteria with a large window-panned eating area fitted out with IKEA furniture, decor, and kitchenware. I suppose it's designed to mainly cater to IKEA shoppers, but the entrance is free, and along with many other people, I frequently drop by and use it as a co-working space – that kind of public space where you can come with your gadgets, connect to the free Wi-Fi, buy a snack (or bring one along) and do whatever work needs to be done. No time limits. No overcrowding. No waiters. No security guards trying to kick you out. For me, it's the place to be when I need to be focused on an important piece of writing. I can’t afford that at home and at my out-patient clinic.

That Monday, I dropped in in late afternoon. Honestly, I didn’t seem to have much work to be done. I wrote a couple emails, recorded a voice message for my podcast host friend in Los Angeles sharing my thoughts on his recent episode, and found myself reflecting on my life situation and the impending empathic failure I was facing in an important relationship. Just a couple days before, I’d had a friend talk to me about the same thing he was struggling with in his marriage. I knew his story, and even better did I know mine. I knew how much damage empathic failures have created in my life over the years, and how much of that damage was unrecoverable. I knew it wasn’t only happening to me. I knew it wasn’t only happening in personal relationships but also in large-scale political and social contexts – and that’s why today we’re so stuck with social justice. After a long time of digging into research on empathy, I believed I’d wrapped my head and heart about what empathy was, how it worked, how it didn’t work, and what got in its way. But something still felt terribly missing. I felt like there was still a huge blank spot in my understanding, and I needed to resolve it.

“God, why do people keep denying empathy to one another?” I thought. “It keeps happening around me. It keeps happening to me. No one benefits from it in the end. What can I do to change it? How do I challenge the status quo?”

The easy answer would be: “It’s because most people are just self-centered assholes. And there’s nothing I can do to change it. I’m a good guy and those people are jerks. That’s it.”

I bet you a thousand bucks I’d be dying to hear such answer in every situation where I witness an empathic failure involving terrible consequences and my anger boils up. But I also know that if such answer comes to my mind, then it’s not from God. Juxtaposing myself with those people is self-righteousness. It’s a function of my ego, and he’s a hypocrite and a liar. In truth, sometimes I am one of those people, denying empathy to others for reasons I can't clearly understand – and not always do I have the opportunity to go back and fix things.

I don’t believe that denying empathy always happens out of deliberately ill intention – at least, not in the majority of cases. And yet, I realize it shouldn’t be happening anyway. Because I see the damage that lack of empathy creates in the world on every level. And I want to be able to contribute to changing it.

So I prayed to God asking Him to give me a new insight. What is an important reason behind lack of empathy that I’ve so far overlooked?

See, I’ve experienced this a bajillion times: when we ask God to give or show us something, He doesn’t wait for too long if our prayer was genuine and we really need what we’re asking for. God is generous presenting us with opportunities. We just have to pay attention. And, as Saint Teresa of Ávila said, sometimes there are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones.

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When I was done with my $2.50 coffee-and-blueberry-muffin snack, I put the dishes on the tray, brought it to the tray return station, and turned around to head towards the exit.

And then it happened.

I heard a high-pitched wail piercing through my ears, and in the split second before I could even see where it was coming from, I recognized the sound and thought to myself, “Another. Freaking. Toddler. I hate it!” It was so loud that it literally hurt my ears, and I felt my teeth clench. Biologically, my first instinct in response to the painful sensation was to get ready to flight, fight, or defend. This is the reptilian brain, you see. Before you know it, it’s already doing its ancient job.

Well, it's not that I don't like kids. And IKEA is a very kid-friendly store. There is a supervised playing room at the entrance where you can leave your child if they’re between four and eight years old. There’s a lactation room beside every bathroom. There’s a special kid menu in the cafeteria, and there are dedicated adjustable-height chairs available for young kids. This makes sense since IKEA’s main audience, at least in this country, are young families. As a result, you can see more kids there than anywhere else in the shopping mall. Over the years spent working in the cafeteria, I learned that despite it being a comfortable and distraction-free place, the only thing that time and again completely ruined my focus there was crying kids. And worse, I never understood why. I could stay perfectly focused under music blaring out from the loudspeakers. I could just mind my business when I heard adults barking at each other over a place in the checkout line. I could continue writing when there were loud noises coming from the construction outside. But when I heard a kid crying, I somehow always fell apart. Most times, my tolerance for vulnerability sucked, and I quickly got angry with the parents who I believed didn’t know how to make their kid comfortable. But deep down, I realized this anger was a shield. There was something deeper and bigger affected within me than just getting distracted by the shrieking sound. It was the trigger of the trauma I hadn't been ready to face yet.

And now, it was time.

A hundred feet away, I saw a two-year-old boy standing in the main aisle between the tables, crying at the top of his lungs. His face was scrunched and red, and he was swinging his arms around. I first figured he got lost, but in a second I noticed he stood turned towards the table of a couple in their mid-thirties. Both were busy with their meals. Every ten seconds, when the crying reached its peak, the woman shot the boy an angry look, and the man seemed to give no fuck at all.

I observed the situation from distance for a couple minutes. My instincts pushed me to leave, and there was again something so intensely painful about it. But now there was a new force keeping me in my place despite the increasing discomfort.

“I can’t judge these parents,” I thought. “They’re probably doing the best they can. Kids are so weird at this age. Their mood changes in a heartbeat. They’re laughing, then half a minute later they’re crying, then a minute later they’re laughing again. No one knows what triggers it.”

A comfortable stance, isn’t it?

Now and here, though, it didn’t look so to me. The boy was weeping imploringly turned towards his parents, and when another burst of crying went in vain, he made a few steps away from them, then he cried again. And they ignored him again.

His yelling was so loud that of course I wasn’t the only person noticing the situation. But now and here, it looked like I was the only person choosing to see it. After spotting the boy, other people just looked away and got back to their meals and their conversations. Some shook their heads and momentarily glared at him and his parents. They were eating, after all.

Yes. He was disrupting our comfort. We all just wanted him to shut up.

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I had no idea why he was crying. Maybe he had just seen someone scary. Maybe he was having a bad stomachache. Maybe he wetted himself. Maybe his last teeth were cutting in. But I certainly know one thing about the human condition: when a person is in pain, there’s always a reason behind that. Even at that age, pain doesn’t come out of nowhere. Something horrible was happening in his world, and he was trying to communicate it. And people around him – including his parents – refused to be engaged.

I remembered this parenting idea from Daring Greatly that once had struck me to my heart’s core: good parents aren’t the ones who never make mistakes but those who always pay attention and stay engaged with their children’s world.

I also remembered this: emotions are our most natural tool to connect with one another. When we communicate our emotions externally, we’re knowingly or unknowingly making a bid for connection. Our need to feel connected is basic and irreducible at any age, and there’s no bigger pain we can inflict on a person in front of us than denying them connection when they’re asking for it by expressing their emotion. When we choose to turn away from a person just because their emotion makes us feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, we diminish their humanity and our own.

Kids are our greatest teachers here because their emotions are uninhibited. This two-year-old boy didn’t worry about what those strangers around him would think of him. He knew no shame. He hadn’t been taught yet that “boys don’t cry” and that his masculine worth is somehow defined by the thickness of the armor he's supposed to lug around never showing his real self. He didn’t worry about causing others discomfort just by expressing how he was feeling. He was simply making a bid for the connection that he needed and deserved. And when he got denied it, his pain legitimately grew worse.

People didn’t ignore him out of wanting to hurt him. They were just protecting their comfort.

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I couldn’t put it as precisely at the moment as I can now, but the realization sank it instantly. With it came the resolve. I knew that what looked like small, insignificant childhood incidents could in fact leave deep scars on a person’s life. I knew I had the power to make a difference now and here. The boy needed to see that at least one person did give a fuck. He needed to see that expressing himself wasn’t in vain, even if everybody else ignored him. I wasn’t sure I could help his pain, but he needed to see that he was being seen.

I started walking towards the toddler, trying my best to fix my eyes on him and not look at his parents and people around who were busy eating. 30 meters of increasing discomfort. 15 seconds of my ears increasingly hurting, me thinking that I was going to have a lifetime of tinnitus ahead of me. But I wouldn’t turn around. Practicing my values was more important than my comfort.

When I squatted down in front of him, his face was a snotty-teary mess, but he saw me through the tears. I mustered the broadest smile I was capable of and said:

Hey, honey. How are you doing? What’s going on?

He stared at me for a second. I’m not sure he understood my words, but it looked like he didn’t believe me. It looked like his eyes were saying, Really, stranger? Do you really care? and mine replied, Absolutely. I fucking do. I saw him draw an ounce of air into his tiny lungs, and I expected another fit of weeping to follow.

But instead, the boy uttered something to me. Something I couldn’t understand – you know, this is how kids speak at that age. Before I knew it, he threw his arms around my neck and put his face on my shoulder. Then there was another couple of sobs. Then he gracefully wiped his nose on my shirt. And then he fell silent.

At this moment, the insight I’d been asking for struck me like a lightning bolt. God answered my prayer. By the time the boy’s Dad came over, visibly embarrassed, I was in so much commotion that I couldn’t even speak. I felt searing tears well up in my eyes as I turned the kid over into the man's arms. I wanted to un-see what I’d just seen.

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There were two things that this two-year-old opened my eyes to: one about myself and the other about people in general. First, I realized why for years it had been so triggering for me to see crying children in front of their disengaged parents. Because this is how my own childhood and adolescence passed. I grew up with adults who never paid attention when I expressed my feelings and often went further and shamed me for it – because I made them feel uncomfortable. I do believe they were doing the best they could with the knowledge and tools they had, but constant lack of empathy resulted in me feeling unworthy, unbelonging, and unloved for the most of my young life – and growing up, I didn’t have anyone else who could substitute for what my parents failed to give me. I knew it wasn’t happening only to me. It was a problem affecting millions of children in the world. That’s why it had always traumatized me to see these kids. I knew the price they would have to pay in the future for their parents’ mistakes.

Second, I realized that this is perhaps the most common reason why empathic failure happens in any other context. People don’t deny you empathy deliberately; they just care about their comfort in the first place on autopilot. This is the reptilian brain’s default option, reinforced by the social culture that portrays vulnerability as weakness and discomfort as a threat to survival. I’m not saying that it makes denying empathy okay. I’m not saying that it makes people less accountable for the choice to not see one another’s pain. I’m just saying that this is the reason why empathic failure is so prevalent, so normalized, and so hard to resist. Your willingness to practice empathy can never be bigger than your tolerance for discomfort. In our culture, most people’s tolerance for discomfort sucks. It just outright sucks. Just like those shoppers at IKEA, busy eating their meatballs and lasagna and looking away from a child screaming to be seen, most people don’t think empathy is worth going out of their way – because it requires discomfort and vulnerability.

This is why this realization was so heartbreaking to me, and I desperately wanted to un-see it. No matter how much I know about empathy, how much I talk about it, and how much I practice it, there’s only so much I can do. I can’t control other people’s capacity for empathy because I can’t control their tolerance for discomfort. When we have a relationship where comfort is your absolute priority, even if you don’t acknowledge it, then, first, I can’t ever expect empathy and help from you and, second, I can’t change this situation against your will. I can understand and explain you the consequences of choosing comfort over empathy, but I can’t make the right choice for you. You have to make it yourself.

You know what choice is being made in most cases nowadays. What do most of us do when we see people in deep hurt or need communicating their feelings to us? Like, homeless people? Or people in utter desperation? Out of our own comfort, we want them to shut up or disappear. When we realize they can’t, then we just look away. We pass by. We pretend to not see. We are so repelled by our own pain and need that we ignore another’s pain and need on autopilot. This is how our pain owns us, instead of us owning it.

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As I walked towards my car, hardly keeping myself from breaking into tears, I found myself thinking about how I made those steps towards the toddler. Wading through the increasing discomfort, focused on my goal, not giving a fuck about what strangers around me might think. See, despite what my reptilian brain told me, the whole thing didn’t take me moving mountains or jumping off the cliff. The discomfort didn’t kill me, nor did the boy’s screaming actually damage my ears. Just like anyone else, I cared about my comfort, and my obsession with it was inflated disproportionately to the actual danger. But there was a force within me making me care more about practicing my values. This force propelled me towards the insight I had needed so much, even though it wasn’t the insight that I expected.

This kid didn’t worry whether it was ‘normal’ to cry in a public space. He didn’t think if it was ‘appropriate’ to hug a stranger. He didn’t worry whether it was ‘okay’ to wipe his snot on my shirt. He just did what he felt like doing. He communicated his condition fiercely and unapologetically. He wasn’t ashamed of his pain making a bid for connection. He just knew he deserved it.

Deep down in my heart, I knew he was doing the right thing. Deep down in my heart, I knew I’d been trying to do the same for the last few years as an adult man, with people who I trusted and expected empathy from. And just like this boy, I had most people turn away. Not because they were bad people but out of discomfort. In fact, they could empathize and help, but they were just too busy securing comfort and advancing further in their privileged lives. And, as hard as it is, I do believe that they were doing the best they could. For some people, choosing comfort is the best they can do.

But for the world to change for better, this is not enough.

That toddler wasn’t the only kid on the planet whose parents didn’t pay attention. Likewise, now I wasn’t the only person in the world who got denied empathy when I shared how I felt and what I needed. And I believe that there comes a day in everyone’s life when we all again become that kid. When we hurt and scream out of pain and people choose comfort turning away from us – including people who we believed would be always here for us.

And on this day, we all will need this freaking stranger. This shit-starter who will choose courage over comfort. This outlier who will spot us from distance and put his mundane priorities aside. The one who won’t give a fuck about anyone's opinion and will walk straight towards us practicing his values. The one who will remind us that even in our messiest and most stinking pain, we are still worthy of connection. And that, no matter how uncomfortable we make everyone else, it still makes sense for us to ask for it.

So that day at IKEA, I chose to be the person I’d needed and never had growing up. Today, I choose to be the person I’m needing and not having now. And tomorrow, I will still choose to be that person I’ll be needing even though I might still not be having them in anyone else. I’m not responsible for what other people choose and who they choose to be towards me. I’m responsible for what I choose and who I choose to be towards others. Because the day I leave this world, it won't matter how much I’ve stuck to comfort in my life. The day I leave this world, the difference I’ll have made will be defined by how much I practiced my values.

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FINAL NOTE: EMPATHY ISN'T A PIZZA

Among the empathy myths that I have come to know, one of the most dangerous is that empathy is a finite resource within us. You know, like a pizza that only has eight slices. So when you give someone empathy, it’s like giving them a couple slices – and now you have less empathy to give to other people and even to yourself.

Sadly, this is how our reptilian brain tries to outsmart our heart. Because when we fall into the belief that our empathy is finite, we can always rationalize choosing comfort over practicing it – because we think we’re saving our limited commodity for someone who “has it really hard”. Someone who is, typically, outside of our actual scope of influence. Not a colleague who’s going through a terrible divorce. Not a family member struggling with addiction. Not a neighbor whose eight-year-old kid is diagnosed with cancer. Not a homeless stranger we meet on our daily commute. But some abstract person who is at a large, safe distance. The one who we can feel okay just “sending thoughts and prayers” to – because we’re fully aware we cannot help them in a real way.

This leaves us nowhere but in the same place of self-perpetuating comfort. When we reserve our empathy for refugees on the other side of the globe and at the same time deny it to people hurting in immediate proximity to us, we become bankrupt on our own terms.

What’s the alternative? The uncomfortable yet more humane option is to view empathy as fire. It’s just not finite. When we give it to others, we create more warmth and light in the world and at the same time we’re not left with less. Yes, it can be extinguished and we need to stoke it with some fuel in order for it to keep burning, but as long as it’s burning, it’s freaking contagious. Uncomfortable behavior can be modeled and taught, just like comfortable one. And yes, this is how we challenge the status quo. It took me to come close to the weepy mess of that boy to make his Dad finally get up from the table and attend to him. And I don’t know whether those parents learned something from the incident or not. I don’t know whether strangers around us learned something or not. I don’t know what that boy’s future will look like. But now and there, I just shared with him what he needed and deserved. And through this, I learned what I myself needed to learn. By virtue of fully embracing discomfort, I walked out of this situation with more than I walked into it with – not less. And this is what practicing empathy always feels like to me – it’s expanding and enriching. But, just like any act of real courage, empathy is never comfortable.