Recently, I’ve begun to deconstruct what I understand about empathy. Growing up, it was always simple: Climb into another person’s shoes and treat them based on that understanding.

Going to USC, however, has shown me how difficult that approach truly is. The school is a melting pot of culture: In 2025, a whopping 26.1% of students were of international origin. 

Every day, we expose ourselves to a range of people, all of whom represent their own societies, upbringings and core beliefs. Those beliefs, in turn, inform their most intimate choices.

It’s a beautiful indication of how diverse USC is. However, it’s also opened my eyes to how little we really know about people. 

In the poem “Song of Myself,” legendary poet Walt Whitman writes: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” 

Lately, Whitman’s words have really resonated with me: They’ve helped me realize the dimensions that people carry — the same dimensions that are hardly ever shown on the surface. 

Oftentimes, we fall victim to trying to understand people based on what it is that we see in front of us. We use what we see on the surface to dismiss and justify our own beliefs — a mental shortcut we employ because it feels convenient. 

In psychology, this is known as splitting. The process is characterized as dividing experiences into extreme, black-and-white categories, which helps us deal with the uncertainty and complexity of certain situations.

In the short term, splitting is a defense mechanism we use to protect the mind against overwhelming anxiety and situations we can’t quite comprehend. But in the long term, it can stunt a person’s ability to emotionally develop and meaningfully interact in social contexts.

Reducing a person to a single moment, label or social category does more harm than good, and our current political landscape thrives on this sort of division. In 2022, 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats viewed the opposing party as more immoral than other people in the United States, stats that jumped from 47% and 35%, respectively, in 2016. 

Welcoming the complexity that being a human being entails is part of the effort of creating communities like college campuses that feel more vibrant and integrated. Embracing the multitudes that people contain is easier said than done, but perhaps it can start by truly, critically listening to what the person across from you has to say. 

Carl Rogers, a founding father of humanistic psychology, was one of the first people to coin the term “active listening.” In Rogers’ eyes, active listening doesn’t just mean recognizing what it is that the other person has to say, but truly considering their perspective: a combination of analyzing both the content and emotional tone of their words.

Rogers also famously said, “Each person is an island unto himself”: Bridging the gap between your island and another includes accepting the full weight of what it would be like to be that person. This is part of assisting others to become a full-fledged person, which can only be achieved if all of their multitudes are given the space to breathe. 

Accepting that a person is so much more than any simple label begins with listening, but it must also be paired with the willingness to understand. This process of empathy is built on the simple fact that humans can be complex and therefore contradictory.

It takes maturity to sway away from binary, rigid opinions about people — especially those who hurt or misunderstand you. Finding your own peace can start with embracing the idea that multiple things can be true at once about just one person.

Engaging with others is an imperfect, beautiful process: Your opinions about people can change extremely quickly. What shouldn’t fade away, however, is the awareness that someone is so much more than just a single moment, mistake or label.

We all must learn how to step outside of our own perspective. We all must understand that although “I contain multitudes,” everyone else does too.