How can one come to know another? Being restricted to a single awareness for an entire lifetime is exasperating. Then again, I’m not sure it is possible to retain one’s own distinct self as an observer while experiencing another’s self. When we know others, we filter their experience through a unique neurological and biological makeup. To be others, we need to become their uniqueness– at the loss of our own.

Embodiment seems to prevent complete immersion into another. It is the boundary.

And yet, humans reach into the boundary through physicality, spirituality, psychology. Through language, sports, games, sex, education, worship, debate. It’s as if the clashing of our boundaries gives definition and shape not only to ourselves but also to our perception of others. The question expands its demands: Is any person truly who they are perceived to be? Can we ever truly know another?

Or is the question, why does this matter? So billions of humans come and go and they live out their distinctness in the process. They merge with each other to some degree – deeply with a select few, distanced but faithfully with a broader middle crowd, randomly and in passing with a much larger subset, and then absolutely not at all with the largest grouping of all. Absolutely not at all. How stark. Does it matter?

I can’t stop believing it does. It feels defiant, irresponsible even, to so easily shrug off the blatant, widespread chasm of suffering that engulfs the world every single day.  And yes, the taunting whisper still warns of the risk – willful blindness for the purpose of psychological safety at the expense of truth. A “gut feeling” only goes so far, and surely one as significant as this demands proof. To what end though? If it is true, humanity can continue striving for more. If it is false, humanity can dive wholeheartedly into chaos and pain. I’ll take the former – at least that self-fulfilling prophecy has a desirable outcome.

Then the question becomes, would it be possible to collectively strive for more, to the point of only caring for rather than hurting each other, and still be trapped in suffering? But surely the elimination of intentional human inflicted pain would drastically improve our standing in the universe. What a weight off the shoulders – to need only worry about natural, unfeeling threats like weather patterns. Animal violence towards humans still hits on something unnatural, despite its inherent naturality. It could be arbitrary to draw the line at mammals – I do in fact find myself uncomfortably connecting with the suffering of insects when I inadvertently observe it. We could tentatively draw the line at natural disasters. The middlespace that holds all other life on earth seems problematic but less urgent of an issue than the inhumane treatment that humans inflict on each other.

It matters because it gives a future and a hope to generations far beyond our own. It weaves the delicate web between individual permutations of existence until something robust takes shape.

And still, there’s no denying that a stray meteor could ruin it all. Indiscriminate nature has the power to cancel everything. So the final question – does it matter even after the human legacy has disappeared from the universe – perhaps even after the universe itself has disappeared? It is hard to imagine something mattering if there is nothing left to even ponder the question. The age-old “if a tree falls” puzzle, but with existential consequences.

If we cannot truly and completely know each other, then our unique experience is preserved. In fact, the more deeply I understand another, the more fascinating and evident their “otherness” becomes – quite often to my utter delight.