— wabisabi of human life
Other world, same eyes—
every soul a distant star,
each story, its own
If my life unfolded in an alternate universe, I like to think I’d recognize it by a certain slant of afternoon light—a shade just unfamiliar enough to feel like a dream. Maybe in that world, I live in a quiet port town on a different sea. Or I teach at a windswept school perched on a cliff, the sky wider, the air saltier, the questions my students ask even stranger than the ones that kept me up at night in this world.
But no matter where I end up, the thing I cannot unsee, after so many crossings and conversations, is this: every person lives in their own, unrepeatable universe. No two people see the same world, even if they stand side by side on the same balcony, drinking the same bitter coffee, watching the same clouds scud over the city.
I didn’t know this as a child. Back then, I believed the world was a single, solid thing—one set of rules, one story, one sun. My universe was the sum of what I knew: the language at my dinner table, the streets I rode my bike through, the rhythms of my parents’ laughter and arguments. I thought other people’s lives were just distant variations, minor edits on my own script.
It took years, and the slow patience of adulthood, to understand otherwise.
It took sitting across from strangers on slow trains—old women with hands shaped by fields, men who left home at sixteen and never came back, friends whose pain lay just beneath the surface of their jokes. It took late-night talks in borrowed kitchens, hiking in unfamiliar hills, listening without interrupting as someone unspooled a memory I could never have imagined.
Little by little, I realized: every person is a world. Every conversation is a meeting of galaxies. Each carries wounds and wonders invisible to anyone else. What is ordinary for me—a taste, a smell, the weight of a word—might be miraculous or unbearable for you. We all move through the world with maps drawn in secret, navigating by stars only we can see.
When you finally let this truth in, everything changes. You start approaching others with radical curiosity and humility. You pause before judging, knowing their logic may have roots you’ll never fully understand. You become gentler—with others and yourself. You listen longer, realizing that connection is possible only when you accept that their universe is as strange, rich, and alive as your own.
And somewhere in that recognition, a kind of freedom appears. You are released from the burden of always being right, or always being understood. You learn to marvel at the diversity of experience, the secret colors in every life.
In my alternate universe, I try to hold this lesson even closer. I greet strangers as explorers from another world. I ask questions, not to confirm what I already know, but to expand the boundaries of my own reality. I accept that I will never truly grasp another’s universe—but I can honor it, even from a distance.
Maybe that’s the real work in any universe:
To look at the world—your world, and everyone else’s—with open eyes and open hands.
To be curious, and humble, and grateful for the wild, impossible richness of being alive together, even if just for a moment, on this particular slant of afternoon light.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in someone else’s universe, or to see your own with new eyes, subscribe. There are endless stories to share—yours, mine, and all the worlds we’ll never quite reach, but can still imagine.
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