Empathy, Good or Bad?

Can you really feel the pain of others in a literal sense?

I spent the better part of my 20s with the belief that one could never really know the pain of others. That it is presumptuous to try. I got mad at my partners for being unsympathetic to my cycles. I got mad at my mother for saying she could feel my pain. I always gave her a hard time for having what I called, “me too’s!”

Each time I was sick, growing u…