The Rest of You Remains

Today, remember this.

Every moment of your life is experienced through a remarkably narrow window.

When we're talking to another person, we know this instinctively. We never hear every thought they're having or understand every experience that shaped them. There's always far more happening beneath the surface than any conversation could reveal.

As the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously observed, "Hell is other people." Whether or not you agree with him, I think he was pointing toward a genuine difficulty: every relationship is an encounter between two people whose inner worlds remain largely invisible to one another.

But I don't think this is only true of other people. I think it's also true of ourselves.

My own experience of being 'me' often feels like standing in a dark room with a flashlight. Wherever I point the beam becomes my entire world. A thought. A feeling. A worry. A moment of excitement. Whatever happens to be illuminated feels like me.

Everything outside the beam feels like it disappears entirely. And yet it hasn't gone anywhere. It's still there in the darkness, waiting patiently for the light to return.

That thought came back to me recently while I was making dinner.

I had the house to myself for the evening, my favourite curry simmering on the stove, Charlie Puth playing through the Homepod. It was one of those rare moments where everything felt uncomplicated. I wasn't trying to be productive or solve a problem. I was simply enjoying being exactly where I was.

Then I reached for the pot and (foolishly) grabbed the hot metal. Instantly, the spotlight swung somewhere else. Pain. Frustration. A flash of anger at my own carelessness.

For a few moments, that was my entire experience. I ran my hand under cold water, found the burn cream, muttered a few words I won't repeat here, and let myself be annoyed.

Then something interesting happened. Gradually, almost without noticing, the spotlight drifted back. The music was still playing. The curry still smelled wonderful. The evening I'd been enjoying before the burn hadn't disappeared. It had simply fallen outside the beam for a little while. Even as my hand continued to throb, the rest of me was still there.

That's the part I find comforting. When we're anxious, it feels as though we've always been anxious and always will be. When we're discouraged, it's easy to believe we've somehow become a discouraged person. Our current emotional weather convinces us it's the entire climate.

But it isn't. It's only the part we're looking at.

The poet Walt Whitman wrote, "I contain multitudes."

I think he was right.

Within each of us are countless ways of being — joyful, curious, conceited, generous, playful, jealous, patient, hopeful. They're not always equally available, and they certainly aren't all visible at once. But they remain part of us even when the spotlight has wandered elsewhere.

Perhaps that's worth remembering the next time you're caught in a difficult mood.

What you're feeling is real. It deserves your attention. But it isn't the whole story. The rest of you hasn't disappeared. It's simply waiting for the light to come back around.

So today, remember this: whatever you're feeling right now is genuinely part of you. But it isn't all of you. You contain far more than the single moment your attention happens to illuminate.