The Lives of Others Seem Simpler Than Our Own

Source: Danilo Ugaddan/Pexels

The commuter train is approaching London Bridge, in the center of the city. I entertain myself by looking at the lit-up windows, glowing in the dark, in the apartment buildings close to the train tracks. In one, I see a young woman cooking in a small kitchen; another shows a gleaming TV set and two indistinct heads watching it.

I reflect that each one of those apartments contains a small universe of immensely complex lives, even when they are inhabited by only one or two people, which is often the case in the center of big cities. Perhaps the woman that is busy cooking in her small kitchen had a telephone call from her mother today in the North to let her know that her father had finally passed away after his long illness and she has been making arrangements to travel there and help her mother with the funeral. Her torso seems quite slim, so maybe she is a classical ballerina who came to London from her native Ireland to train here and hopes she will one day join the Royal Ballet. Or perhaps she is a broker in the financial district who struggles with periods of depression, and today she found out that she is a direct descendant of Rasputin.

Even if none of these things were true, and this young woman has the most "boring" of existences, and her day had been completely unremarkable—even then this "boring" life would still include wonderful complexities, countless memories (despite her young age), fears, likes, hopes, abilities, and aversions, and there would be enough of them to fill many volumes.

We are all complex creatures.

During my professional life, I have encountered mild old ladies who were burlesque dancers in their youth, nervous bespectacled small men with furiously vivid and beautiful imaginations, and myriad others who surprised me with their rich life stories. And, yet, when we meet someone new, or even after we have interacted with them for a while at work, for instance, we tend to categorize them in simplistic terms. We standardize their hopes, fears, joys, and sufferings, even when we admire them. In our mind, their lives lack the color, depth, and contradictions of our own lives, as if they were mere cartoon characters. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by social media, which encourages us to show our lives to others as a shallow chain of standard pleasurable events, although it could be argued that we have always done this, even in the now distant predigital times.

Empathy can help us feel less lonely.

It takes very little reflection to realize that the lives of others are in fact just as complex as ours, and from here stems a thought that will help us connect with our fellow humans more meaningfully: Others are just as scared as we are, they also regret stuff and they also hope, just as much as we do. Many probably have painful memories of losses and face daily stresses, as we do. Their lives have the same depth as ours. This thought will help us empathize with others, but it will also help us feel less lonely in our own existence.