Note on “The Most Important Writing Exercise I’ve Ever Assigned” by Rachel Kadish

I delighted in people-pleasing as a child. A confession like this would have paralyzed me eight years ago. Now I realize that I was only ever afraid of having a disagreement with my peers, whether on the playground or in an argument about abortion rights. 

In her article, Rachel Kadish introduces an exercise in which her students write a monologue from the perspective of someone demonstrating morals or opinions opposite to their own. However, they are required to include an instance that evokes empathy for the character. Kadish writes that within the last couple of years, her students have found it increasingly difficult to bring empathy into their monologues.

Constantly, I see commenters on Instagram and TikTok with the same inability to view another’s opinion on a personal level. It grates on me, to be reminded how both my peers and global leaders alike are beginning to see the world in black and white. Kadish reminds the reader that people often fear being morally wrong, so they create an elementary caricature of what is “good” and “bad” in their lives. To handle personal and global conflicts, neither reducing a stance to its extremes nor ignoring the conflict with niceties will work. Instead, we must be brave enough to have empathy.