I learn what sagacity is from the acts of compassion people commit every day. Those acts of compassion, made null and void by the callous appreciation of those on the receiving end, teach me why I shouldn't empathize. It's an innovative form of torture is what it is.

Empathy is a double-edged sword; cuts and heals with equal intensity. Some days it rewards you, while on some you're punished. The scales of truth don't favour any outcome of being empathetic. You simply don't walk away the way you were before. Above the deep cuts and wounds, left by the remnants of a poisonous memory, are scabs that are never going to heal. Beyond the healing, there's a price paid in silence. That price- our sanity. We endure, we absorb, but we do not express. Instead, we help others through the storm, amidst which we're stuck ever since it broke out.

We know the way out, yet we do not escape. This willing entrapment is the cost of empathy. We persist, the cycle turning onto itself and reaching where it began, with no end in sight. It's just the miserable lot of us, struggling with no sign of despair. Quite ridiculous how there's content.

I'm far from peace. I'm home.