Glassy-eyed hordes

Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who is equally bewildered, hurt, entranced and seduced by life.

Do other people feel so much pain, as if their hearts were literally straining to leap from their chests?

Does everyone constantly question themselves, the world and their place within it?

Do other people take as much joy from those moments where they are so wrapped up in simply living that the past and the future fades away, and they are consumed by their connection to the present?

Do all the people I meet, all the people I will never meet, all the people who have ever been or will be, do they really ever stop and think about anything?

It is so easy to assume that the majority of others do not see the world in all the richness and complexity that I do.  That deep thoughts and emotions are confined to a select few.  That not even those who are closest to me cannot possess an inner world which is so deep and alive as my own.

So easy.

So easy then to dismiss the poor, the outcast, the stupid and all those who are so different to me that I cannot understand the world as they live it.

So lonely.  But so easy.

How can I walk among the glassy-eyed hordes at ease if I know that every single one of them is full to overflowing with thought and emotion, depth and pain, joy and wonder?  How can I turn away from anyone if I know they have an inner world equally as intricate as mine?  How could I ever react to anyone with anything other than utter fascination and heartfelt compassion?

But equally, how can I really genuinely believe, understand and accept that there is nothing unique about me?  That all the people I meet, all the people I will never meet, all the people who have ever been or will be, are so incredible?  It is like asking me to count the stars in the sky, the grains of sand on a beach, the drops of water in an ocean.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Plato