With that, I understood empathy not through the abstractions written in dictionary definitions, but rather through the smell of freshly mowed grass, my sister's wide grin and dirty cleats, and my own beating heart. Adulthood, I came to the conclusion, was not defined by a paycheck, birth year, or the ability to legally buy alcohol drinks. Rather, it came with the realization that the one can view the world through a multitude of lenses, and that the ones least self-centered are often the most gratifying.
Later, I began to realize that not only could one change lenses, but change aperture and shutter speed, as well. Sometimes, reality seems dismal & unchanging, but reducing the aperture and increasing the shutter speed produces an entirely different picture altogether. Other times, reality is so bright and brilliant that one's only impulse is to make as many memories as possible, reducing the metaphorical shutter speed to mere fractions of a second.
And with this epiphany, I stepped into a pair of well-worn shoes that belonged not to a person -- a father, a mother, or even an older sister -- but an emotion. I was clothed in compassion and adulthood alike, for the two were threads in the same