The Parallelism of Life

You guys must be thinking, "Hmmm....what a weird title?". So, to clarify, I think this is based on a common experience that everyone has, and has probably wondered about sometime in the life. If you haven't and this is completely new to you, have this for food for thought!

So, basically, I was thinking how most of us live our lives , eating, reading ,suffering, entertaining and pleasuring ourselves over the course of around 80 years, and how it came to be. Some of us plan to achieve great things, maybe become "great", others....(like me😂) live 'lives of quite desperation'.

We strive, and keep on striving to achieve one thing or the next, whether it be money, status, kids, etc, etc.

During our childhood we are mostly dictated on developing and having fun times with friends, in our young adulthood, we are mostly concerned with achieving status and getting the right life partner. During our middle age, it is about family and health management. When senescence approaches, we think about all the things we have done and contemplate spirituality, or maybe find 'God'. 

This is the life of the average person, like you and me, and not of the outliers.

During the entirety of our life, we always think about ourselves...…. We always think of  'my life, my education, my parents, my job' etc...… which sure is required for you to be a functional contributing person in this society. This is the default state of our mind right?

But consider this, can we all be living inside a game? All each one of us controlled by some "external game player"? . Yeah...this question has been asked about a lot by people. In fact there is a movie series about it, The Matrix. To this, you might protest, "Well, hell no! I have control over my options! I am not controlled by anyone". Sure, true, you think you have your own "free will" right? Maybe, to find answer to this question, you'll have to do a lot of digging on the internet. Let is start from here. I'll leave it at that point...…

Taking it one more step from here, the main motivation for this post can be summarized in this single word 'Sonder'. Never heard of it? Sure , here is it's meaning. It is defined as “the realization that each random passer by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”

Interesting isn't it?

Surely most of us have already experienced this feeling at least once.... it is a serious realization which makes us understand the complexity of life. It gives us a perception as a 'whole'.

Most of us never never kinda realize that other people with other mind such as us truly exist and they even have their own thinking, which might be as rich and colourful as ours is.

We might ponder upon the beauty of the daytime sky. At the same time, someone across the world, might be wondering about the same, but about the night sky. You guys will probably never meet in the future, but both of you have same thoughts about the same object ( the sky). We may never realize this, but we are never alone in our thoughts.

Similarly, comparisons might be made to the mood we are feeling and the mood any other person in the room has. Take an example of an interview, let this meeting be offline. ( had to give context so that people who live in the 6th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic can visualize this xD) In this situation, though the interviewer and the interviewee are in the same room, both will have different mindset. The interviewee might be a little nervous, slightly curious about his immediate future and his job prospects. While on the other hand, the interviewer might just think of this as another job, something that must be "completed". Though both are in the same room, they aren't on the same plane of thoughts.

This was the inherent parallelism in life I was talking about. This seems trivial, but it is so crucial. We really don't seem to care about this and get lost in the semantics of our own life. 

This single fact seems to boggle me every time and makes me think is  that there is always more to life than what I see and what I can comprehend. Another thought is that for this kind of thinking, language is no barrier. Me and another person in Serbia can have the same reaction when the famous person "Elon Musk" lands on Mars( xD). While I'm thinking about the futility of human education and how easily we forget things, another person in Japan, who is older can be thinking of the same thing.

This means that everything and anything we ever feel, will all be in our heads....and it won't be unique. We won't be the first one to be worrying about the beautiful and fragile existence at the top of Mt. Everest, we won't be the first ones thinking about how awesome certain things are. We'll all be the worrying about the same thing again and again and again...….

And this next section is to the person who is reading this:

Hello Stranger,

I hope that you are okay. I know that we don't have anything in common and will probably never meet in person. For you, this is just a random post written by some internet nuthead. For me, you are the invisible person who'll never talk, whom I'll never see, but sometimes who listens to me and to what I say. Thank you for being who you are and what are you. Thank you for doing what you have been doing. You have my entire wishes to achieve whatever you want to achieve in life. Thank you.....

I would like to end this rant with the words from the video by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

“Sonder. You are the main character—the protagonist—the star at the center of your own unfolding story. You're surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit.

Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.

But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passer-by. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs and inherited craziness.

When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you'll never be able to see. That you'll never know exists.

In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk.”

Thanks for reading! Hope I gave you some food for thought!