"The next time you are in a store, restaurant, mall, workplace, or just walking down a crowded sidewalk, pick out one or, if you have time, two or three individuals, and, in turn, practice becoming them for a few moments. How does it feel to wear their cloths (can you feel the cloth against your skin?), to have their hair or no hair, to walk as they walk or cannot walk, to gesture as they gesture? Do their eyes occasionally look to the side or dart around like all of our eyes do, as if the one inside who is looking out is a little uncertain, a little vulnerable? It's a very big, unpredictable world out there. Without analysis, inferiority, condescension, or perspective — in other words, without thinking about it — what is it like to feel as they feel and think as they think?

"Try doing this today, and if it is enjoyable, for the next few days. Perhaps you will be struck with ordinariness. Perhaps you will sense that we are pretty much alike, and that we are all in this together. And perhaps you will feel a little sad for the occasional person you see who tries so hard to stand rigidly apart, only to find loneliness and isolation."