Different people have different perspectives and their life experiences are not the same as yours. This feels like an obvious statement, more along the lines of “duh” than “revelation”, but every time I’m prompted to think about it, I feel wowed by the diversity of human viewpoints. In a visceral way.
It’s actually kind of unsettling — my intuitive schema for how the world works depends on most people perceiving things similarly to me, and I have to constantly tear down that default model and build a more accurate one. Brains are not good at diverging from their basic assumptions, at least not without significant repetition, so it’s a struggle.
Compassion is difficult to maintain, but it’s useful. I would even say that empathy (or at least a semblance thereof) is one of the more high-impact skills a person can learn. It vastly improves your ability to communicate, which also makes you better at design!
You articulated this very well! I also have to tear down my familiar model pretty often.