As
a child, I consumed stories voraciously: tales of children on the prairie,
runaways hidden in a museum, and siblings who find another world behind thick
fur coats. Like most children, I was encouraged in this habit and other ways of
cultivating my imagination, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that one of the
benefits of imagination became clear: the importance of imagination in
cultivating empathy, even for those who have very different lives than ours.
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