Attentional Empathy

Only now, on committing myself to dying, do I realise the truth about empathy, my empathy. I always thought that it was attentional, that my ability to feel it would fall away with attention intermitted, I felt I had to devise and focus meticulously on analogous situations in order to empathise. I was too afraid to ever stop constructing these ideas and was indefatigable in holding them crystallised.

I can still empathise, without effort or technique. I know this because I am now too weak to make such mental constructs, yet I feel empathy. Nor do I even have strength to write of this realisation that would have overhauled my motif — no one will ever know that I finally felt this peculiar empathy.