Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep," advised the apostle Paul (Romans 12:15), wise words that apply especially in times of crisis.

There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision.

The very fact of our becoming aware of this profound ordering of things will enable human collectivization to pass beyond the enforced phase, where it now is, into the free phase: that in which (men having at last understood that they are inseparably joined elements of a converging Whole, and having learnt in consequence to love the preordained forces that unite them) a natural union of affinity and sympathy will supersede the forces of compulsion.

You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.

A person is a person because she recognizes others as persons.

People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm. It is a learned condition.

Only in restoring the web of connection can we find peace. I'm sure it is possible to heal in a mountaintop cave alone, but for most of us the quickest and deepest healing happens in the embrace of others.

When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.

So too I would say we South Africans will survive and prevail only together, black and white bound together by circumstance and history as we strive to claw our way out of the morass that was apartheid racism. Up and out together, black and white together. Neither group on its own could or would make it. God had bound us, manacled us, together. In a way it was to live out what Martin Luther King, Jr., had said, "Unless we learn to live together as brothers [and sisters]".

When you truly empathize with someone, you have to take into account all the things that make that person who they are.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Talk to someone about themselves and they'll listen for hours.