Lessons from last week

Each of us knows a deep and personal secret about the human experience.

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The human experience is vast.

This is true.

There are infinite possibilities of ways in which one can live. Some are left to chance. Alas, we do not have a say in the circumstances we are born in. Some are left to conscious decisions. Even then, how much is hard to say. How consciously do most people make decisions? What impacts their choices beyond their control? Can any of this be measured objectively?

The human experience is vast. What then is also true is that none of us get to experience human life in its completeness.

None of us know the magnitude of ways in which the human heart can break and recover, the desires that can live within our souls, and the deep pains and joys that one can experience.

Yet all of us know a deep and personal secret about the human experience. We know that one specific way in which the human heart can break and recover, the one desire that can live within our soul, and the deep pain or joy one can experience. We know this secret because it was revealed to us through the fact that we have lived a unique life.

Each individual carries a piece of the puzzle that makes the whole of human experience. We can only hope to catch a glimpse of these pieces. At best we can read or hear about what others have been through, the secrets they possess, if they ever dare share them. At worst we go on living in a world confined to our own understanding of what being alive means, never knowing the full range of emotion the human heart can experience, or the depth of longing the soul can bear.

I think, even still, we can find solace in knowing that we are not completely alone. That our pieces resemble others. If we go back in history far enough, we’ll find someone who wrote about the very thing we feel. Or come across a stranger, or a distant family member that knows our pain and joy all too well.

Perhaps saying that life is completely unique is giving it too much credit. Our deep and personal secret allows us to connect to others who can relate to us. And even if they can’t, it allows us to tell someone something true about what it means to be human.

The greatest task that every human is set on from the second they are born is just that — to learn what it means to be human. It takes precedence over every other goal we set for ourselves. In fact all our other goals may do nothing more than to masquerade the ultimate goal. They may even simply aid it. In order to learn what it means to be human, we must tackle the complicated mess that life can be.

We must seek to understand these secrets… others’ as much as our own.