What I noticed from the other side of the glass

Tuesday 24th March, 2026

My Dear Reader,

It is time to write to you again. Where do the weeks fly to? Today I am sitting in a bookstore in Kuala Lumpur watching people walk by, through a full storey glass window. They are wrapped in their lives. Going somewhere, focusing on something, worrying about something. I am imagining it all without them even knowing. Me on one side and them on the other. A glass wall between my reality and their own.

I wonder perhaps if the glass is a bit like empathy itself. A barrier that could separate us if we choose to let it, but equally a filter that allows us to step into each other’s worlds at the same time. 

I see a mother slowly navigating the mall, with her four children. They appear to be tourists from Japan and their mum is so calmly and joyfully navigating the four young minds through the shiny corridors and appeal of the brightly lit stores. I feel peaceful just watching her. 

She reminds me that we have so much control over our micro realities, and that even as the world around us becomes complex and chaotic, the choice as to how we live and cheer up our own hearts, is ours alone. Small moments of peace and calm which no one can control except you. The ability to notice more, live gently and connect in the present. These are skills and choices - intentional ones - that you can make every single day.

There is so much of our world that you can’t change but when you master your self-empathy, there is so much of your own that you can. What a relief that is. Settling, grounding, uplifting.

I hope some of that spreads to you through this letter. Cherish the simple things, the moments when your kids relish a bright pink plastic clock with cat ears, or you take that first sip of an ice cold lemonade.  Gifts in their own way.

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Perhaps we don’t need to. Maybe that is the secret to happiness? Not to chase more life but to notice the life that is already here? We shall have to try and see.

In empathy and until the next letter,
Mimi

P.S If this is your first letter, The Empathy Letters are personal, simple, candid letters that prompt a new idea, share a strangers story, or simply offer some refreshed empathy in your week. Never a newsletter, these letters - similar to a ‘penpal’ of old - are from me to you, and I would love your letter in reply, every now and then.