this is kinda a weird post, and based more on what I've been noticing about myself lately than anything that happened, but I wanted to write about it nonetheless.

I remember in high school I had a teacher who was very influential over my thoughts and even some of my arguments for why life should be the way it is. Basically he made me more the person I am today than many other people who have been in my life for longer amounts of time. but something (among the many) that has stuck with me and come up recently is the idea children have that there is no one in the world except them. I'm sure I'm not going to explain this correctly, but I'm going to try. He said that when babies are born, they don't really understand that anyone else is in the world expect for themselves. They don't even realize that their mom is a different person than themselves. I guess that makes sense since they've been really connected for 9 months, and then probably didn't see too much of many other people for the first few months after they are born either. it is only slowly, and over time, through experiences that they come to the understanding that there are other people in the world besides themselves. for most of us, this isn't that hard a concept to understand, since we realize when we look at other people, we know that we are not them.

However, recently I've been thinking about that, and realizing just how separate and disconnected we are with every other thing in this world. if you think about it carefully, which I definitely have in the recent past, we are separate in almost every sense of the word. We don't share thoughts, we don't share emotions, we don't even share experiences of which we may both be in the same spot at the same time. We perceive things differently from everyone else ( have you ever thought what it would look like to see the world from someone else's eyes?) and interpret things differently based on every experience we have ever had. There is seriously, completely, and entirely no one like any of us in the world, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be. Empathy, something that is defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another," isn't really true. To a certain degree, yes it is. We can go through similar situations as others and therefore can more properly understand what the person is going through, but we can't understand where they are coming from. not the way most people think they can.

I've been thinking about this recently because of two completely separate events. The first is looking into my dog's eyes and seeing intelligence there. I don't think i've ever noticed it before in any animal's eyes, although I'm sure I've come across many intelligent animals. I've just never before looked deeply into their eyes. But seeing the intelligence there, i've come to realize that no matter what anyone else says, I'm always going to believe that dogs have feelings near the complexity of humans. They can feel love and sadness; endless patience and wiggly impatience; company and loneliness. I see fear and triumph, boredom and happiness, and I can recognize a lot of those in my Buster's eyes and body language. I understand what those mean to me, and so I impose my understanding on what he feels. But do I really understand the emotions he is having? probably not. I'm so close to my puppy, and he is so simple in comparison to so many humans, and yet I realize that I can't connect with him so that there is never any confusion in how we feel.

The other case is completely different and shows my constant surprise in people. There are those who come into your life and you think you know so well, and understand so simply. Then they go and do something that you weren't expecting, or say something you never thought you would hear them say, or share an interest that shows an entirely different side of them to you that you couldn't have known about no matter how closely you analyzed the one part of you they shared with you. This has happened to the last 2 friends I've seen this summer. The first friend I don't dare say I knew well. We had worked together and I only ever saw that one side to her since it was always in such a controlled setting. And yet, when I dove into her life I met so many other aspects to her life that I would never have guessed about her it was thrilling. My other friend was someone I talk to all the time. Someone who I have discussed so many different topics with and thought I really knew so well. When he came to visit me: when we were talking in person again instead of via phone, or email, or even facebook chat, I learned so much more about him and his likes and dislikes, his preferences. a million little things that would never have come up in conversations unless we were in person. It made me realize that no matter how much we think we know a person, there is always so much more to know. we can think we understand and are so connected with them, and then there are those little things that show how separate everyone in the world is from one another. no matter how close they are, there is always a distance.

We may realize when we are becoming our own that our bodies are completely separate from anyone else's, but I don't know when we learn that we are alone in more than one way. It is a slightly depressing thought, so maybe it's better if we don't realize it at all. and for how separate I've been saying we are, I know there are some things that connect us with others. we are islands floating adrift on the ocean, but every once in a while there is a bridge connecting two. and sometimes those bridges are weak, but other times they are strong enough to withstand the crazy storms that can occur only out where there is no solid ground. i prefer to focus on those bridges most of the time, but every once in a while it's interesting to realize that we are islands, no matter how many bridges we have connecting us to others around us.