Edited by Jim McCrory, Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 19:26
"Empati väntar inte på det perfekta ögonblicket."
(Empathy doesn’t wait for the perfect moment).
It was a summer in the late nineties, a weekend where time felt unrushed and the world was a gentler, more mysterious place. I was with my son and two of his friends, heading from Göteborg toward Stockholm. Somewhere along the way, we decided to stop in Hjo, a quiet, picturesque town perched at the edge of Lake Vättern, where the blue water simmered like something out of a postcard.
We sat together in the town square, enjoying snacks and the peculiar sweetness of Swedish summer light. That’s when you appeared—a girl of perhaps fourteen—so naturally present, as if you had been there all along, as if you belonged in the centre of our small world, yet you weren’t quite part of it.
You chose a seat close to us and stayed where you were, how do you say, tjuvlyssnade på vårt samtal? Maybe you were curious about these boys who had come into your town, strangers with strange accents and easy laughter. Maybe you were lonely, aching for a connection, someone to talk to beyond the borders of your usual days.
When we left Hjo, I thought little of the fleeting moment at first. But as we drove off toward the highway, my thoughts kept circling back to you. The gentle way you made your presence known. The quiet possibility you held in your hands, as though hoping we might offer you a tiny bridge to another world.
And I felt it then—that ache that arrives too late: I could have invited you to write to my daughter back home or a young friend, to anyone who might have kept a warm thread of connection running between you and some faraway place. I could have reached out in that simple human way that says, you matter.
Yet at the time, I had not thought to do it. The thought came too slowly, after we had left Hjo behind us. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk, as they say—we rarely grasp the fullness of a moment until it’s already gone.
Decades have passed since then, but you still dance in my memory, a small and radiant reminder of what it means to be human. To long for contact. To matter to someone. Perhaps you have long since forgotten us, or perhaps our visit was tucked away into your own summer memories, like a fragile photograph in an album.
And perhaps too, across all this time and distance, my delayed empathy reaches you in some unspoken way. Perhaps we are all like that—constantly crossing paths with strangers who need to be seen, to be invited into our circle for a moment, to feel they belong.
That summer day in Hjo taught me that empathy cannot wait for perfect timing. It cannot wait for dusk.
And still, you dance forever in my head.
Image generated with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot
Delayed Empathy
"Empati väntar inte på det perfekta ögonblicket."
(Empathy doesn’t wait for the perfect moment).
It was a summer in the late nineties, a weekend where time felt unrushed and the world was a gentler, more mysterious place. I was with my son and two of his friends, heading from Göteborg toward Stockholm. Somewhere along the way, we decided to stop in Hjo, a quiet, picturesque town perched at the edge of Lake Vättern, where the blue water simmered like something out of a postcard.
We sat together in the town square, enjoying snacks and the peculiar sweetness of Swedish summer light. That’s when you appeared—a girl of perhaps fourteen—so naturally present, as if you had been there all along, as if you belonged in the centre of our small world, yet you weren’t quite part of it.
You chose a seat close to us and stayed where you were, how do you say, tjuvlyssnade på vårt samtal? Maybe you were curious about these boys who had come into your town, strangers with strange accents and easy laughter. Maybe you were lonely, aching for a connection, someone to talk to beyond the borders of your usual days.
When we left Hjo, I thought little of the fleeting moment at first. But as we drove off toward the highway, my thoughts kept circling back to you. The gentle way you made your presence known. The quiet possibility you held in your hands, as though hoping we might offer you a tiny bridge to another world.
And I felt it then—that ache that arrives too late: I could have invited you to write to my daughter back home or a young friend, to anyone who might have kept a warm thread of connection running between you and some faraway place. I could have reached out in that simple human way that says, you matter.
Yet at the time, I had not thought to do it. The thought came too slowly, after we had left Hjo behind us. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk, as they say—we rarely grasp the fullness of a moment until it’s already gone.
Decades have passed since then, but you still dance in my memory, a small and radiant reminder of what it means to be human. To long for contact. To matter to someone. Perhaps you have long since forgotten us, or perhaps our visit was tucked away into your own summer memories, like a fragile photograph in an album.
And perhaps too, across all this time and distance, my delayed empathy reaches you in some unspoken way. Perhaps we are all like that—constantly crossing paths with strangers who need to be seen, to be invited into our circle for a moment, to feel they belong.
That summer day in Hjo taught me that empathy cannot wait for perfect timing. It cannot wait for dusk.
And still, you dance forever in my head.
Image generated with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot