A few days ago, I was waiting for a bus after my class. It was evening, that heavy and tired hour when the city feels both alive and exhausted. I had been waiting for twenty minutes until a small scene unfolded before me. It wasn't dramatic or shocking but something ordinary, that stayed in my mind since.

A young policeman, standing in the middle of the road, was trying to manage the traffic. He looked exhausted, his shirt drenched in sweat, and his voice almost breaking as he kept telling rickshaw pullers not to take a certain turn that was causing congestion. You could tell he had been doing this for hours. He was giving his best, kept shouting, hoping someone would listen.

Then came a young rickshaw puller. He was barely twenty-five, maybe younger. A few minutes earlier, he was helping his elderly, disabled passenger cross the road. He did it gently, holding the man's trembling hand, making sure he reached the footpath safely before returning to his rickshaw. It wasn't merely for any tip, but an act of his young, kind heart. And then, as he started to pedal again, unknowingly he took the same turn the policeman had been warning about.

Within seconds, the policeman rushed towards him, grabbed his rickshaw and pulled his ID card from the handle. The young man froze, confused and scared, kept asking for it back. His voice trembled as he said he didn't know he wasn't supposed to take that turn. But the policeman, already frustrated by the day, didn't listen. He just walked away with the card in his hand.

But today, everything feels different. Everyone is rushing to reach somewhere, to prove something. The air feels heavier. People look at their phones more than at faces. Even when someone falls on the street, the first instinct is to record or at worst, just ignore, not to help. And it's not because we've become selfish. It's just the kind of world we live in now. We wake up tired, we go to bed tired. We are surrounded by endless noise, news, deadlines, and pressure.

It was a simple moment, one that most people around me probably forgot a minute later. But somehow it felt heavy inside me, something in that moment reflected what we've all become. It wasn't only a small traffic argument. In them, I saw two people, both tired, both struggling, both failing to understand each other. One was frustrated from hours of shouting to control chaos. The other was too drained to be heard.

Neither was wrong. Neither was right. They both just wanted to get through the day. Yet, in that moment, they stopped to see each other as people. Both walked away with a wound. The young rickshaw puller, who had been kind a few seconds ago, left with a sense of grievance, feeling helpless and unseen. The policeman, tired of controlling a crowd who wouldn't listen left with anger and misunderstanding. It made me wonder: what happened to our empathy? When did we become so reactive, so defensive, so quick to act and so slow to feel?

This feeling followed me again a few days later, when the HSC result came out. A video of a young girl, who aced her exams, shared in an interview that she had been divorced during her exam period. She was just eighteen, so young, bearing a pain that would stagger anyone. All she did was be brave enough to speak about something painful so openly.

But the comments under that video were heartbreaking. They were a river of cruelty.  People mocked her. Some called her names. They analysed her life, her character from their keyboards. And what hurt most was seeing women join in, who you'd hope might understand. No one stopped to pause and feel the weight of her courage.

It was the same story, playing out on a different stage. The policeman and the rickshaw puller in a crowded street, a brave girl and some faceless crowd online. In both, empathy was the missing character.

Empathy used to be something we carried naturally, almost like a part of our identity. We saw it in the way our parents would offer water to a stranger. Neighbours shared food when someone was sick. Strangers helped each other during a crisis. People didn't have much, but they had time to care. That was enough to make the world feel softer.

Empathy needs time. It needs stillness. It needs us to stop for a moment and listen. But this world doesn't allow that anymore. Everything pushes us to move faster, to do more, to feel less. We scroll past pain, we honk instead of waiting, we comment instead of comforting.

But today, everything feels different. Everyone is rushing to reach somewhere, to prove something. The air feels heavier. People look at their phones more than at faces. Even when someone falls on the street, the first instinct is to record or at worst, just ignore, not to help.

And it's not because we've become selfish. It's just the kind of world we live in now. We wake up tired, we go to bed tired. We are surrounded by endless noise, news, deadlines, and pressure. We are constantly reacting. The space inside us that once held patience and warmth has slowly been replaced by exhaustion. Empathy needs time. It needs stillness. It needs us to stop for a moment and listen. But this world doesn't allow that anymore. Everything pushes us to move faster, to do more, to feel less. We scroll past pain, we honk instead of waiting, we comment instead of comforting.

Still, I believe empathy hasn't gone completely. It is somewhere buried under all our tiredness. Maybe we don't need to learn empathy again. Maybe we just need to slow down. To look around. To remember that everyone we meet is fighting their own battle, even the policeman, even the rickshaw puller, even the stranger online. When I think back to that evening, I still believe things could have gone differently. If the policeman had taken a breath, or if the rickshaw puller had known what was happening, that moment could have turned softer.

Empathy is what once made us who we are. It is what held this country together in its hardest days. We may have lost touch with it now, but it's still here, waiting quietly for us to stop rushing, to look up and find it again.

Sinthia Kamal is an undergraduate student of Global Studies and Governance at Independent University, Bangladesh.

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