This weekend one of our relatives came over.  I told him, “Your uncle fell one evening last week on his way to his office and badly bruised his knees and hand.”  I was hoping he would feel something when his uncle went to office again on Saturday night.  He started saying how he himself fell so many times before and recounted the number of his bones he had broken when he was a boy. I interrupted him saying, “It is a different story for you to fall and break bones. You are so young and can recover quickly while your uncle is more than twice your age.”  This did not stop him from continuing rumbling the time when he last fell.

To be sure, this young man has a rather high IQ, yet, I have found him very much lacking in empathy or the ability to experience or understand the feelings and thoughts of others. I would think no education is complete without the development of empathy, which might explain why some humanity courses are the must for all majors even in MIT.  I am sure my children would read the message from this.