An Open Heart

Universality

What does it mean to have an open heart? To consider different people, ways, ideas? Not really. It’s subtler, richer, and more challenging.

All the thoughts you have thoughts, all the feelings you have felt — they have been felt billions of times before, and they are being felt billions of times right now, at this very moment.

And yet. I’ve noticed something interesting. Whenever I bring up the idea that there is a common human experience that we all share, you shy away.

It’s understandable. You want to feel special, singular, unique.

But I want you to think about it.

What is really going on here? I say: there’s a shared human experience. You think: “I don’t have anything in common with them. They’re not like me”. What could you possibly have in common with a Mexican, Malaysian, poor African kid, Taylor Swift? They have completely different experiences than you.

Don’t they?

You’ve thought: “Why doesn’t this person love me? Who will love me? Why didn’t I get that job? The end of this relationship is so painful. How will I make ends meet?”. And so on. Do you think you are the only one? There isn’t a human being who has ever lived who hasn’t thought those things, save those that died young, unfortunate, or excluded. The thoughts that you believe are unique to you are special. But in a very different way than being singularly yours.

They are what make you human. Just like they make everyone else human, too.

Really seeing this is probably the single greatest psychological step towards growth and possibility that we can take.

Here is what I have found to be remarkably true. If you cannot develop a sense of real universality, discover the shared human experience in you, then the following things will be outside your grasp: Empathy, wisdom, courage, rebellion, creativity, imagination, kindness. To name just a few. You will be limited to the following: Alienation, loneliness, frustration, futility, resignation, apathy, cynicism, mediocrity.

It’s pretty straightforward why. If you don’t have anything in common with them, then there will be a profound sense that you are alone in this big world, save the few people (you believe to be) just like you. Why would you give anything to people that you don’t have anything in common with? So there will be little motivation to really have life affirming relationships, connections, contact, experiences, ideas, breakthroughs. Can you live a happy, complete, fulfilled life in this alienated, fractured, and bitter way?

In the end, I have seen, over and over again, that those who cannot discover a shared human experience dwelling within them go desperately unfulfilled. But the reason is simple: their belief that they are special, better, truer limits them from really discovering much about life in the first place.

Maybe it sounds like I’m lecturing you. Maybe I am, though I don’t mean to.

I think that the extreme reaction many of you have to universality is driven by a kind of soft narcissism. From the day that many of you have been born, especially those with helicopter parents, you’ve been told that you’re special, a unique snowflake, a person with no limits.

In this regard, modern psychology has failed you utterly. The point of telling you that you are special is not that you are better. When you think: “I’m special!! I can’t have anything in common with that kind of person!” what you are really concluding by implication is that “that kind of person does not have the human experience I do”.

You are unique. But what is truer is that we are all human. Our experience is different in superficial ways. But in the ways that matter it is precisely the same. Like I say. All the thoughts you have thoughts, all the feelings you have felt — they have been felt billions of times before, and they are being felt billions of times right now, at this very moment.

What is unique about you? It is what you can transform this common human experience into. Whether you can create a great book, film, song, business, fashion, and so on – or even just a simple humble life of gratitude and quiet love – with it.

What is unique about you isn’t your humanity. That is what we share in common. It is the true self in each of us. What is unique about you is how you alone choose to express it.

When you confuse the two, the result is narcissism, not growth. You try to deny your common human experience, the true self. So you cling to these thoughts of specialness to defend against it, to prove your singular worth in this big world. But the truth is now that defensiveness owns you. The more that you think you are special, unique, better, is the moment that you stop really being here. Who can you relate to, lift up, love this way?

You cannot cling to, try to own, possess your experience in this little life as singular anymore than the wave can hold onto the ocean.

The whole universe is in you. All of the human experience. All the love, pain, beauty, anguish, defiance, gratitude, joy.

Your heart isn’t really open until you see it.

Umair
Philadelphia
September 2016