There are 7 continents. There are 195 countries. There are 7.125 billion people in this world. It is estimated that in my lifetime I will interact with around 90,000 of those people (and that is being generous!).
That is only 0.001% of people! All these different lives happening at the same time as mine and we will never exist to the other. It is simply stunning. There are roughly 6,500 different languages in the world, and in my lifetime, I will never see or even hear many of them. There are different cultures, foods, and landscapes that I will never experience. I just don't have the time. It sounds crazy, but 80 years or so is simply too short. We say to people, "One day I'm going to see the world." or even "I love to travel!" when we've barely traveled. I say these things. I want to live a crazy, adventurous life and a solid, settled down one at the same time. I want to see the amazing things in this world, but I also want to see the bad parts. I want a better understanding of other people's life experiences. While I want to climb mountains and cross oceans just like the rest of us, I know it is not all possibly. I can try, but it is not. Life gets in the way! My other dreams (like for my career or for my family) do not match up with constant travel. There are too many sunsets and cities and people. There are so many things I have never done, and may never get around to do. It's not a small world after all, it's a big world! During this realization that I cannot experience the world, I stumbled upon my new favorite word.
Onism - n. the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people's passwords, each representing one more thing you'll never get to see before you die-and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.
Onism is "all the billions doors you had to close, to take one single step forward." It's our alternate realities that are no more than a shimmer of imagination. Our lives exist uniquely because of the choices we've made and the roads we've taken.
I am not pessimistic about this fate though. My life is not like yours, and that is something I should be thankful for. You should be too. We all experience life differently. Each sees different things and different people. Our individuality is a luxury easily forgotten. How we spend our lives is our choice, to an extent. I may never see the same horizon you do, or I may see the same one every day. The point is, we cannot experience the entire world, but no one else will have our experiences. I have my slice of heaven, and you have yours. It's a short life... what will you do with it?
