Recognising our own mistakes helps us to empathise non-judgementally with others and helps enable us to understand their issues.

When we make judgements we're inevitably acting on limited knowledge, isn't it best to ask if we seek to understand, or simply let them be?

One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.

George feels that, even if all this double talk hasn't brought them any closer to understanding each other, the not-understanding, the readiness to remain at cross-purposes, is in itself a kind of intimacy.

When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming , no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming, she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.

And that might just be the root of the problem: we’re all afraid of each other.