The biggest lesson of Vietnam, he argued, was that the US had to learn to empathise with its enemies.
Even though my personal political views are completely opposed to hers, I had to learn to empathise with her.
Her aim is not to have a "peacenik lovefest", in which each side learns to empathise with the other, but rather to understand the dynamics, and difficulties, of the negotiations themselves.
As much as international students need to learn to empathise and communicate across cultures, so do domestic students need to learn to communicate quite complex medical information to patients with poor English skills.
With regard to clinical versus non-clinical tutors, medically-qualified PBL tutors are significantly more likely to make use of their expertise in facilitating their groups' learning and to empathise with their students' lives as medical students.
In the near future, we may all become identity tourists, swapping between bodies in different games, experimenting with our sense of selves as each world dictates – and maybe learning to better empathise with others in the process.
The gifts we give our children – self-confidence, an enthusiasm to learn, an ability to empathise with others, a joy in forging new friendships – these are instilled at an extraordinarily young age.
In the meantime, take a minute to empathise with their condition.
What follows is scarcely less dramatic, but the pace slows a little, allowing us to learn more about these damaged characters, and even to empathise with them.
