The Story Called Me

We all have our own stories to tell no matter how mundane a life we lead.

And we all want an audience - to share our moments of joy, jubilation, melancholy, sadness, and loneliness with. We all want someone to listen - to our crowning moments of success, to our achievements, to or struggles both within and without. We all want someone to share our views, perceive in the same manner, comprehend with the same thoughts.

We all want to be in touch; we all desire to be touched, to reach out to someone else both physically and emotionally. It is an innate instinct and desire that overpowers, often, any rational sense. We all need to be needed. And that yearning can be so powerful it oftentimes does not matter who that person is.

And at the end what we really want, as Kundera curtly points out, is just for someone to hold a mirror up to ourselves. Friends, companions, acquaintances exist for the sole purpose of reflecting to us what we would like to see and hear of ourselves.

It is the condition of alterity. Empathy, no matter how powerful, is never about the Other. It is always only about 'me'.