Sometimes I feel like I am one in a million. Well, I really am one in 8 billion. It’s easy to feel like you are a part of nothing bigger than yourself until you put a bit more thought into it. You are, just by being alive, doing something greater than you know.
Some days I think about life through my mother’s eyes or life through my father’s eyes. It’s scary to think of how I am perceived. How does my smile look through your eyes? How do my words read in your mind? And is it ever possible for someone else to understand you fully?
The word sonder, a noun, describes the profound realization that every random passerby is living a life as vivid, complex, and full as your own. Your life is the most important thing to yourself. But to someone else, you are nothing more than a number.
It’s easy to forget everyone else is a person.
When someone is racist,
When someone is a murderer,
When someone looks different from you,
When you don’t know them,
But every single person you have ever walked by was going somewhere to maybe meet someone or to do something.
And that realization can really fix a lot of your problems.
You can never really be lonely. There is always someone out there. And you are never going to be unique. There will always be someone who enjoys what you enjoy. Who hates what you hate. Who talks the way you talk.
Human beings long for a sense of grouping and bonding. Human beings are not capable of fully being alone and one of a kind. If you truly were so unique that nobody ever understood you, you wouldn’t have anything.
There would be no media for you to consume.
There would be no clothes for you to wear.
There would be no food for you to eat.
There is enjoyment in everything that you do, because part of being human is having fun and enjoying things in life.
So then you need to think about other people.
Empathy is a trait I look for in everyone.
Empathy is divided into two categories.
Emotional (Affective) Empathy: The automatic, visceral feeling of what another person is feeling.
Cognitive Empathy (Perspective-Taking): The intellectual ability to recognize and understand what another person is thinking or feeling, even if you do not feel it yourself
It is possible for someone to be completely devoid of either kind of empathy.
But
I believe every person, especially those you meet on a daily basis, are filled to the brim with empathy.
The realization that you are not alone in life, regardless of what you may be going through, is really life saving.
The realization that people do care about you, even strangers, is really important to understand.
The theory that everyone is born kind,
May very well be true
Because hate is taught
I guess I have too much cognitive empathy to ever be so hateful to another person that I wish their existence to go away.
Whenever I hear about a murder or a car crash or something of that nature,
My mind always rushes to the victim.
Where were they going?
What did they want to do?
What was their life like?
What made them happy?
Did they cry?
Did they enjoy something?
Who were they?
What were their dreams?
Death is so desensitized in modern media because we watch films where villains kill civilians all the time.
Each body that drops dead on screen,
Their character,
Had a life and a story.
Every person had someone or two who brought them into the world.
Most every person has had a similar experience to you somehow.
The world is so big,
And some people choose to think they are alone.
The man driving next to you is going home to his family. Each member of his family is waiting for him to go home. And each person in that family had something happen to them that day.
But to you, he is the jackass who cut you off.
I don’t ask people to think about other people for empathy purposes.
It’s so you get out of your own head about your life and realize you are a part of something so much greater than you will ever know,
Your life, your existence, every breath you take,
Every decision you make and every person you talk to,
Everything you do is so very special.
To be alive at the same time as someone else
To have family that you are connected to by blood and genes
To learn
Everyone needs to look around and realize how lucky we are, that you are my friend or she is your sister or he is your boyfriend or they are your parents or this is your school or that is your home.