People are just people

I know it is cliché, but what makes clichés powerful is the weight of their truth. And the truth is, we are all the same, we are all people, all, in our own unique way, trying to figure out exactly what it means to be people.

I don't believe anyone has the whole idea figured out; there are lots of people who have tried. There are lots of people who spend there whole lives telling other people what being people is all about, or should be about. I doubt they really know. It seems most of the people I have met, including myself, don’t even have themselves figured out.

Now even though there is a lot we don't know about being people, there is a lot we do know. We know that people have different preferences: some people like being around lots of other people and some people don't, some people are focused on their feelings and others are focused on their thoughts, some people love structure and some like to fly by the seat of their pants.

We know there are lots of things that influence people: nurture sort of things like parents, society, government, upbringing, and nature sort of things like body type, body chemistry, brain chemistry and emotional make up. These influences all blend together differently and are soaked in differently by different people and affect people differently. There is much more than I could ever list here, much more than I even know, about what influences people and what people know about people.

One of those things people know about people is that all people are different from all other people. All people are unique in the way we live out the experience of being people. People deal with the complex array of inputs differently. People make different choices based on the different perceptions of those inputs. And different people have different beliefs about the outputs the choices will create. And we all do this differently, in the best ways we know how. And we all think and feel differently about what it means to be people.

Despite the differences among people there is so much the same about people. For example, there are trends and commonalties among people, enough so that psychologists, philosophers, priests and politicians are able to group people into categories. Some people like being in a group, in a category, and others rail against it. Some people use the categories to understand other people. And many people don’t even care. Which ever group people fall into, people are still just people. All of us, just people, nothing more, nothing less.

There is something comforting knowing that I am nothing special, that I am just like everyone else, just the same as all the other people. It is comforting to know that screwing up and being confused is not unique to my experience. Just like all the other people, I am trying to figure it out, trying to be the best “people” I know how to be. I look around and appreciate that I am in good company; there are lots of great people in this world.

Yet, knowing that each of us is unique, there is something sad in knowing how different I am from all other people; we all are. It is lonely to know that I am all alone behind my eyes. No one, in the history of the world will think the things I think, or feel the things I feel or see what I see in the way I see it.

The same goes for everyone else who has lived or ever will live. All people are alone within themselves and there are no people who will ever know exactly what it is like to be other people.

We can use what we know about people to try to put ourselves in the shoes of other people, to try and understand other people, but we can never be other people. The only way to fully understand the complex experience of another is to be another; that can never happen.

Yes, it makes me sad, knowing that the wholeness of my being can never be known by another. And, it makes me happy, knowing that I am completely unique, completely special, just like all the other people.

So here we are, all of us people, spinning around the sun, trying to figure out what it means to be people, surrounded always by other people, and at the same time all alone. All the people, completely the same as all the other people and completely different. Leaders, followers, creators, consumers, givers, takers, lovers and haters, all just people. No better than the other, no more worthy or more perfect or more wonderful.

All just people.