“Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.” — Everything Everywhere All At Once
These words offer a simple response to one of life’s most difficult realities: we rarely know the full story of what another person is carrying.
We see the impatient customer, but not the frightening phone call they received that morning. We notice the withdrawn colleague, but not the exhaustion waiting for them at home. We hear the sharp response, but not the fear, grief, disappointment, or loneliness beneath it.
Our first reaction is often to judge what we can see. Empathy asks us to remember what we cannot.
That does not mean pretending harmful behavior is acceptable or abandoning healthy boundaries. It means resisting the temptation to reduce an entire person to one difficult moment. Someone can be responsible for their actions and still deserve to be treated with dignity.
Kindness gives us enough space to hold both truths.
Waymond’s words are especially powerful because they do not present kindness as weakness. Kindness is a deliberate way of meeting confusion without creating more pain. It is the decision to remain human when circumstances invite us to become defensive, dismissive, or cruel.
In everyday life, this kind of empathy is rarely dramatic. It may look like pausing before sending an angry reply. It may mean asking, “Are you doing okay?” instead of assuming someone does not care. It may be listening without immediately offering advice. Sometimes it is simply choosing a gentler tone.
These small choices matter.
A person who feels understood is more likely to lower their defenses. A tense conversation can become an honest one. A disagreement can remain respectful. A moment that might have deepened a wound can become the beginning of reconciliation.
Empathy does not require us to know exactly how another person feels. We may never fully understand their experience. What matters is our willingness to approach it with humility.
We can say, “I may not understand everything you are facing, but I am willing to listen.”
That sentence carries no grand solution. Yet it communicates something every person needs to hear: You do not have to prove your pain before I treat you with care.
This is particularly important in leadership. Titles, deadlines, and responsibilities can make people appear like roles rather than human beings. But behind every performance report, missed target, or difficult conversation is a person with a life beyond what we see.
Compassionate leadership does not lower standards. It brings humanity into the way those standards are communicated and upheld. It replaces humiliation with coaching, assumptions with questions, and indifference with attention.
We will not always get this right. There will be moments when impatience wins. There will be words we wish we could take back. Empathy also asks us to offer grace to ourselves—not as an excuse, but as an invitation to begin again.
The next time someone frustrates or confuses us, we can create a small pause between what happened and how we respond. Inside that pause, we can ask:
What might I not know?
That question may not resolve the situation, but it can transform the spirit in which we enter it. It reminds us that every person is more complex than the moment before us.
We may not know what is going on.
We can still choose kindness.
And sometimes, that choice is how healing begins.
Go Give It.