Looking Out the Window: Why Presence is Key to Building Empathy

It started with a simple choice. Riding in a cab up Madison Avenue on a Thursday morning, Rob Volpe put his phone down and just looked out the window. For ten minutes he watched the city move: people heading to work, cafes filling up, dogs outpacing their owners, sunlight hitting the street. It wasn't a dramatic moment. But it was a human one. And it was exactly the kind of presence that empathy requires.

We live in an all-you-can-eat buffet of content, designed to keep us consuming and never quite satisfied. But something is shifting. From teens disconnecting from phones to Gen Z turning away from social media, there's a growing hunger for the finite, the real, and the right in front of us. Empathy starts with attention. And attention starts with putting the phone down.

That same trip brought Rob to Dear New York, a photography exhibit at Grand Central Station from the team behind Humans of New York. The most moving section? Hundreds of photos taken by New York City schoolchildren, each nominating someone who inspired them. Not celebrities. Not influencers. Teachers, coaches, parents, grandparents, siblings. The everyday people who saw them. Empathy, it turns out, is often that simple: I see you.

In this edition of Reading Between the Lines, Rob explores how presence fuels empathy, what the Friendship Personality Quiz is teaching him about how he shows up for the people in his life, and how a small shift in awareness can change everything about the way we connect.

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