One Saturday evening, a drunk motorcyclist cursed at me on the street. My first instinct was to respond in kind.
Then an image flashed through my mind: my father — tall, thin, smelling of alcohol, carrying sorrows he never spoke about. I recognized the posture, the eyes, the particular sadness that drinks to forget.
I didn’t fight.
The drunk man on the street had his own unseen story. His outburst came from somewhere. Anger rarely arrives without a wound behind it.
Compassion is not weakness. It is the highest understanding — the recognition that the person in front of you is, in some ways, carrying the same things you are.
— Thiện Minh