Exploring private lives of our personal planets

by Christopher Byram, co-opinion editor

There is a thing people like to say when a person is having a particularly selfish moment: the world does not revolve around you. It’s annoying to hear, it’s obnoxious to say, and it’s wrong. We are all the dominant suns in our own personal galaxies. My world does, in fact, revolve around me. Yours does the same. But the strangest thing is that those two worlds have virtually nothing in common with each other. Our worlds are in completely different orbits.

To borrow the words of Morgan Freeman in the movie, “Feast of Love,” “There is a story about the Greek gods; they were bored, so they invented human beings, but they were still bored, so they invented love, then they weren't bored any longer. So they decided to try love for themselves. And finally, they invented laughter, so they could stand it.” Love is, of course, drama. Death is drama. Life is drama. Drama is the essence of life, and without it, our lives would be nothing.

I don’t mean the sort of drama that is associated with high school and all of its immature, egomaniacal glory. I mean the dramas that unfold daily in all of our own private universes. They’re happening all around us constantly. Most of us don’t have any idea what the person sitting next to us in class is really thinking, or what they’re really going through, or if, in fact, they’re going through anything at all. Most of us are too caught up in what’s going on in our own lives to really be bothered with other people.

How much does each of us really know about the private worlds of our parents, our siblings or our best friends? What depths are in these people that we haven’t even begun to consider? Strangers have fathomless depths that we may never know, but what about the people who are in our lives –and who’ve been in our lives- for months, years, decades? What tragedies are playing out in their lives? Some are closer to their families than others. I don’t know that my family is as close as it is downright nosey, but even beyond all the things we say to and know about each other, how much are we missing?

From time to time, someone will make some hubbub about his or her own personal dramas that are seemingly tearing one’s world asunder, but do we really care –I mean really, truly care- what’s going on in another person’s life, enough so that three days later that person’s fortunes and misfortunes are still on our minds? Some do, maybe, but how far does even that concern extend? How many days need to go by before it is deemed acceptable to forget about another person’s heavens and hells?

Please allow me to clarify: I do not mean close family, or even extended family, best friends or friendly neighbors. I’m speaking of the little dramas that play out before us on a regular basis that involve people we do not know, we do not care about and who ultimately make no discernable impact upon our lives or the lives of fellow students, professors, cops, robbers, doctors, lawyers, dogs, cats –whatever and whomever.

If the student who sits beside you in macro economics or general psych is having a bad day, do you really care? Does it matter to you? And, more importantly, do you even realize the person is having a bad day to begin with? Even if you did… again, would it matter? Maybe it does if it’s a cute girl, or if he’s a kid you’ve known since middle school. But all the over-complications aside, you have to ask yourself how much of another person’s life has anything to do with your own. Is it important to you if the person you see twice a week for one semester out of the year is suffering from depression, if that person catches the flu and feels miserable for a week, or if they overdose on heroin?

Maybe it sends a few ripples throughout your little stretch of the galaxy. But for most people, the private lives of others do not send our own worlds crashing out of orbit. If I’m wrong, then so be it. In the end, would that even really matter, either?

Suppose I said to you that my roommate murdered my kitten? Or that my mother had brain surgery? Or that I think about how many available ways there are to kill myself at any given moment? These things might have profound impact on me, but beside the initial shock of it all, does it really matter to anyone who’s not already involved?

Maybe I’m just too cynical at heart. But my guess is it really wouldn’t matter much, regardless of the issue. Kitten killing, brain surgery and suicide are certainly not issues that one would take lightly if they had any impact at all in a person’s life. But if they don’t have that impact, then where does that leave the issues? Does that make these things worthless if they don’t directly influence or impact a person?

Maybe this sort of stuff does matter to you. Maybe the private lives of others have a profound impact on you. If you’re capable of thinking outside of your own orbit, then I commend you for your selfless concern. But I ask you to move on. You are not the people I’m trying to reach.

The irony here is the people who I am trying to reach are probably too far gone in their own worlds to concern themselves with me or my articles. But supposing hope is not all lost and there is some selfish hack reading these words and asking himself or herself the bigger questions in life that go beyond the limits of comfort and complacency, I ask you to consider something outside of yourself. That is, I ask you to consider others.

I don’t mean to say that you should be “considerate,” that you should be kind and nice to everyone. Not everyone deserves kindness and consideration by that definition, but no one deserves to be ignored by the entire world. I’ve asked a lot of questions up to this point, and those questions will have to be answered on your own, according to your own morals and beliefs. But now I have one more thing to ask: a favor. I am asking that we all set aside our own little dramas for a moment in order to accept the difficulties of another, whether they are bigger or smaller than our own, or to enjoy the pleasures and good fortune of others, so that we, too, can take part in another person’s happiness, even if it is not ours.

The world has become a small place, while paradoxically becoming larger and more complex. We all go through our lives thinking of ourselves and how the world should bend over backwards for US, and a majority of us think very little about the troubles of our neighbors, our classmates or our professors and administrators. Monstrous though some of these people can be, they are still people, and our private lives are not the only ones being lived.

Although we are all the center of our own private worlds, spinning in their own little orbits, perhaps a few metaphorical planetary collisions could do our very real universe some good.