Everything is harder than it looks

Empathy. For each other. For me a very important thing. An essential of being human. The older I get, the more I am struck how much everybody on this planet has to cope with and do in order to live their lives. For some it is easier and for some it is hell. But even when you live in peace (a luxury), have a good job, friends and family – life is hard. It is also beautiful and can be light. But at the core of human existence is: struggle. No matter how easy a life looks from the outside, there is nobody walking on this earth who has not been through many crises, dark nights, hopeless episodes.

Often the second thought on this is that you need to power through, stand up, never give up. That is human nature. It is the reason why we (still) exist. Life only allows those beings to have a future who do it. I find this narrative is a little bit overtold, given that it is very obvious how life works.

What I would like to give more weight to is an alternative derivation: The person in front of you. In the subway. In the bakery. In the hospital. In your office – this person has been through countless battles. So no matter what this person seems to be to you, you are probably very wrong. Because people are functioning, living in the now, and trying to have a life that feels good, that makes sense. The history of a person is not printed on their forehead.

Who we are right now is the result of the sequence of our past experiences. And there are so many. More than we remember. The complexity of each of us is so damn high. Everybody is so damn “deep”. You know that. If you take the time to talk to anybody, open up and listen to each other, this is always the case.

In the day-to-day operations of life, we seem to forget this fact. As if this would be necessary to function well. But I find that this is not the case at all. For me, it is the other way around. By being aware of the above, I find that it opens the opportunity to connect to each other on a level – even if it is only for a couple of seconds – that is fulfilling.

„If a person dies, a universe dies”. This sentence is from the movie “Pi”, which I watched in my 20s multiple times; it has stuck with me since then. Because to me, it felt like a truth.

Each of us is a universe. Of experiences. Of feelings. Of thoughts. And so much more we do not fully understand. I doubt that anybody on this rock moving through death-bringing space has any idea why we exist and what this is all about – human existence. Only speculations and straws of hope for a framework of explanation.

And I think that is totally fine. I find the best “religion” is: awareness and empathy. Stopping in the moment, listening to life, using our senses and our mind to try to perceive reality as it is. And not as we assume it is. Being “there” in the moment when interacting with another person.

And to remember that everybody has been through a lot to this point. Good and bad. It is always nice to be friendly to each other. Being empathetic. Even if I just quickly buy a croissant at a bakery before going to the office to get stuff done.

So to the usual “stand up and never give up,” I would like to add: Falling down is part of the journey. It will happen again and again. So try to be in the moment, feel yourself and have empathy for others. It will make the journey so much better.