Just Another Face in the Human Experience

By nature, man is a lying animal. We lie to set up walls. We set up walls because we don’t want to admit the truth to ourselves. It is in our nature to question, to inquire, vis-a-vis a constant reworking of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

The question is, what are we so afraid to talk about? Before I dive into that, I want to talk about a few principles.

Man has, historically speaking, been afraid of the unknown. Our very definition of death is based mostly on a realization of our own transience. In the grand scheme of eternity, a concept humanity can barely even comprehend (much less even visualize), we understand how marginalized our own existence is. In the span of everything that ever happens, how can anyone feel like something important at all? To paraphrase Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York:

“You are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. You’re too busy dying, or being born, to really live your own life.”

We fear the void, and we fear joining it. Humans in general could be said to share this fear; at the very least, elements of these fears are shared. It is in our own uncertainty that the veil is lifted, and we find ourselves staring at one another.

I feel that in many ways, humans are afraid to admit their similarities. For some strange reason, we view our own emotional insecurities as legitimately debilitating weaknesses. We don’t want other people to dig those things up about us, but then again, here we are.

Of course, I’m not saying that we’re all exactly the same. Or that we should just be cogs in a machine.

But when you really boil away all of the fundamental elements of your own life, of the things that you think make you the person that you are, I think you’ll find that we all have this sort of commonality in all of us.

We are all afraid. We are all trying to define ourselves and find meaning. And then after that, we try and find comfort in the meanings we’ve defined for ourselves.

There is a certain fragility shared as well. We all hurt emotionally from time to time. We all know the feeling of being isolated by our peers and ostracized for whatever reason.

We also feel the desire to matter to another person. To seek a peaceful and painless existence with people that appreciate us. Care about how we feel. Ask about our thoughts on things.

We ultimately want to be valued.

Of course, there are many different parameters that define how exactly we want all of those things. Everyone has a slightly different calibration.

But, at a fundamental level, we are not so different. At all. Gender, sexuality, race, name, physical features. These things become irrelevant when you consider the importance of what is similar between everyone.

This is just a part of the Human Experience.