What will you do with the stories entrusted to you?

Because empathy and kindness have to be instilled in children for it to develop. We all have the capacity for it, but the capacity has to be nourished.

Adult lives generally unfold in either one of two ways:

1. Wondering how so many people have made it to adulthood without having developed empathy. Even if you ignore empathy as a moral condition, it's acquisition is a practical condition which is a pre-requisite for managing many other aspects of adult life (careers, relationships, interactions with strangers, etc.). The idea that so many people are roaming the earth without having developed this capability is astonishing, slightly terrifying.

2. Wondering why, despite all my best efforts, I am unable to connect with anyone. Does everyone else experience this profound sense of hurt and isolation? Even when I am with people, I feel alone. Nothing I do alleviates this condition, except momentarily. I feel like I even lack a connection to myself, or that my self doesn't exist, except maybe in rare moments. It's like there is a void and I must fill it with something: religion, drugs, sex, spending, etc.

But suffering and wealth are mutually exclusive events. plenty of non-rich people also suffer. This would only apply if you knew the rich person was suffering. Without this info, it's reasonable to assume that their life is actually better.

It's not easy to make a fundamental change to your outlook like that, well done. I think most of us have at least a bit of what you're describing of yourself pre-mid-50s, and could use a little more untangling of these fixed narratives about ourselves.

I'm a big fan of Alan Watts', his talks are absolute gold.

Generally, people who experience childhoods which are impoverished of the stimuli necessary to develop robust senses of self and the coping skills that come with it are left much less resilient to life struggles in adulthood.

If you have developed a sense of self early in childhood, then you are able to develop empathy for others, if you bring empathy in to a relationship, then you can be trusted and trust others. Think about it, you cannot rely on a relationship that does not have trust as it's basis, you cannot be trusted in a relationship if you cannot perceive or understand the other persons needs and feelings, and you cannot perceive or understand the other persons needs and feelings if you cannot perceive or understand your own.

If you have a sense of self, and then you have developed empathy, and then taken that empathy in to relationships, and if you have then made the moral choice with that to be a kind person, then that enables you to form resilient relationships. And you take those relationships with you in to adulthood. These relationships, and the coping mechanisms that got you them, are highly effective cushions for the shocks of adult life. Life changing struggles can still afflict such people and bring them down, but then they are much more able to recover since they still have the scaffolding they developed in childhood and they can rebuild.

For those with a childhood impoverished of the necessary stimuli, it is much more difficult, because they are rebuilding it all from scratch.

And then there are those for whom the experiences of life have been so damaging, possibly combined with genetics, that they may never be able to develop a functioning sense of self, or empathy and go through their entire lives. And yeah, the older you get, the more difficult it gets because you may not have the attributes that would enable you to turn it around earlier in life (family or school friends with whom relationships haven't yet been completely poisoned, good looks enough to meet someone new, meeting ambitious people your age at the start of their careers who are looking to network, etc..)

Glad you asked. There are two types of kindness:

- The one you employ as a manipulation to get something you want out of an interaction. Not to make a moral judgement on this, we all do it, when you want to buy a pack of gum at the convenience store you affect kindness (we call it "being polite") in order to make the transaction go smoothly.

- The one which requires empathy. Empathy requires a sense of self, combined with the ability to recognise the same selfness in others.