Every day, when I walk from my day job to the bus stop, there's a weirdly-shaped T-intersection that I have to cross. That is to say, I have to cross the "stem" of the "T" with the road forming the top of the "T" at my right.
Oftentimes, when I'm waiting to cross, some helpful driver coming up on my left will wait for me at the intersection and signal to me that it's okay for me to go. However, these drivers don't generally bother to look around and consider whether or not it's safe for me to cross based on the traffic coming from the rest of the intersection - in many cases, it is not. So they signal me again, looking increasingly confused and impatient over the fact that I'm just standing there and waiting...until I point to the semi truck that they're encouraging me to walk smack into.
I refer to this sort of incident as
everyday catastrophic empathy failure. "Everyday," because it's very common, and "catastrophic" because it makes me think: if we humans are having that much trouble empathizing in a situation THAT obvious, how disastrous is our lack of empathy when the differences between us are more complicated? Harmonious communication and interaction requires that we be able to put ourselves in one another's shoes, but far too often, we stay resolutely stuck in our own, expecting that others meet us there, confused by behavior that we've only bothered to consider from our own point of view. ..and we don't
realize it!