The Human Condition

It’s sort of amazing to me that people live everywhere; it makes it hard to be a solipcist.

Here we are in a huge city, thousands of miles from home, and everywhere you look, human beings are scurrying about here and there, busily living their lives, from morning till night and beyond.

There’s a lady walking her dog, leaning over to drag it by its collar. Here’s a young man in running shorts jogging through the neighborhood. And look at that older gentleman with the fat stomach; he’s in a hurry somewhere, his briefcase banging his knees as he minces rapidly across the street.

And all over the world, are billions more like them, every person the center of his or her universe, but every single one—except maybe Brad and Angelina—no more important to the world at-large than anyone else.

Contrary to the conceits of New Yorkers and Parisians (among others) the city in which you reside confers no special importance upon you. Maybe you feel cooler having an address on the Cours de La Reinne (we marveled at some amazing apartments overlooking the Seine after our visit to the Eiffel Tower last night) than 30th and Alder (like our humble abode), but it’s not obvious that any of it really makes any real difference—except to real estate agents, bankers, and shop-owners.

Granted, all this opulence and magnificence makes a person feel small and insignificant by comparison, but that’s probably a good thing. Having the world’s greatest 327-word blog to the contrary, it’s nevertheless good to be reminded that I’m nothing more than a single data point in the six-billion-strong array of individuals who are just as important to themselves as I am to me.

While I sat in a café off the Place Contrescarpe yesterday afternoon, I watched a drunken old man sitting in a doorway suck on a bottle of wine and sing “If I Were a Rich Man” in French.

Clearly, that mattered, somehow.