“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elisabeth Kubler Ross.

The most beautiful people in my world have either been tortured as children or humiliated as adults. Those are the people who have opened themselves up to life and empathy and compassion.

These are the people who feel their pain and the pain of others.

There is nothing heavier than empathy, the highest state of humanity.

My own pain does not weigh so heavy as the pain I feel with someone and for someone else, a pain intensified by empathy, by the imagination, and by the hundreds of echoes that I sometimes can hear in my head.

Harper Lee wrote that you could never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view.

Sensitive people are often dismissed as weak or damaged. But to feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness; it is the symbol of the compassionate, the truly alive.

Our culture often paints the empath as the broken; they are pushed to the edge of life by the so-called “strong.”

But it isn’t the empath who is broken; it’s a culture that has become disconnected, dysfunctional, and emotionally disabled.

They are the most beautiful people in the world.