Ocean Vuong

Do you get where I'm coming from?

And then unbeknownst to me, so many people saying, me too.

Kindness, grace, and attention.

Absolutely.

Because kindness is thrown around a lot, right?

It's like, oh, be kind, be kind.

But what I love about it, I love kindness even more than the other word that gets trafficked a lot, which is empathy.

Because empathy can still be static.

In a way, it can also be dangerous and render us complacent.

To me, kindness is such a...

A powerful testament to what it means for us to act on our debt to each other.

Kindness is now empathy via action.

And a lot of times growing up, we knew that we're not going to get anything back right away.

Because we couldn't, you know, the characters in this book don't have anything to really give each other but each other.

You know, there was a line from, I believe it's the Bible.

It's a religious text.

I don't know if it's the work of St.

Augustine or the Bible, where the line was, we are given ourselves.

That is the gift of life, is that we are given thisness.

And, you know, I'm not a Christian, but I really love that idea that, oh, God,