reaching toward empathy

the Golden Rule is only one step   

to really know another is hard,

if we’re lucky, we can learn to know ourselves pretty well
and then we can guess at another by imagining him or her as us,
such a leap, though, can block as well as reveal,
the Golden Rule is only one step toward empathy,

richness of understanding rests in how well
we can take other steps and accept we are ignorant
and then it rests in how well can ask that we learn to be larger,

each of us has the infinite within us
yet there are infinities without us,

it is hard to know the infinity within,
it is even harder to know the infinities without.

by Henry H. Walker
September 14, ’12