Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

Boyd frames compassion not as a soothing sentiment but as an embodied, sometimes painful form of awareness. To feel “connected to everything” is to lose the protective illusion that suffering is someone else’s problem; responsibility expands with empathy. The image of having to “carry the Universe” suggests the psychological weight that can accompany moral attention—activists, caregivers, and contemplatives alike can be overwhelmed by the scale of need. Yet the quote also argues for a disciplined compassion: becoming “strong enough” to love the world without denial, and “empty enough” (less ego, less self-protection) to face even atrocity without turning away. It points toward resilient, non-avoidant love rather than naïve optimism.