"we have an obligation to listen"

Interesting NY Times Op-Ed that I think is a really important thing to be reminded of every once and a while. It can be really dulling to listen to or read the news because it seems that all you hear about are numbers of deaths and mass atrocities and nuclear testing on top of all that chaos that is your daily life. Or is at least my daily life.

In any case, I definitely know that feeling of giving up on changing the world. Gandhi says to "be the change you wish to see in the world" but there are definitely days when I feel like being that change is impossible. No one's listening anymore. It seems like all this change is just being thrown against a brick wall that's not going anywhere. But all of these issues and scary news events involve real people with real stories and lives and problems. Where has all the empathy gone? Where has all the motivation and action gone? I mean why are we criticizing Sotomayer because she has empathy. When did it become a bad thing? Even if we are talking about the Supreme Court, we're still dealing with people. Not automated answering machines and banking systems.