If you haven't already experienced this feeling once, you should try every so often to step inside someone else's shoes and actually visit their working space. Because if we are honest with ourselves, our friends tell us about their trials and errors at work and so on, but how many of us have actually visited their world? My husband and myself have completely opposite career paths as I am a teacher in a pretty colorful and vibrant atmosphere and he spends almost all of his time at the hospitals. Yesterday evening he was on call, but we decided that we would eat some dinner in Oakland outside and make a date night out of it. I finished some of my lesson plans, he took some calls and then I fell asleep on the couch with the little cacoon he has for himself during the evening hours in which he is manning multiple hospitals by himself. 

Before I knew it, I woke up and it was 3:00 AM. And our date night outing was over, he had finished his rounds for the night and we walked back to the car. What I realized is, no task is too little for date night. Even falling asleep on a couch while my husband works provided us both with a sense of comfort. No time spent together is too mundane because when you work completely opposite schedules, even the smallest amount of time is worth it. In fact, I would gladly give up my bed any day to spend a night in the Bat Cave. Empathy can only truly be practiced when you have been there yourself. So now when he says night life can be lonely, I can completely see why. And maybe when he spends a lot of his time thinking and not always talking, I can now see why very clearly. All those little nuances and feelings become much clearer when we take the time to understand where those feelings are coming from. When we spend the time in the cacoon of another-really understanding what makes them fly.