Life Is Everyone

Last week I watched the documentary "The Human Experience", which tells the story of Jeffrey Azize as he travels in search of an answer to the question "what does it mean to be human?" It was incredibly touching. I cried, brimmed with empathy and love and compassion. It made me want to do better, to volunteer, to love larger, to be nicer. I was particularly struck by the summarizing phrase that "life is everyone." It's a sentiment that I know I've thought about and written about (the connectivity of all our separate lives), but it's another thing entirely to see that idea unfold onscreen. Whether he was talking to the homeless on the streets of NYC or disabled kids in Peru or a leprosy colony in Ghana, it became clear: human beings intuitively believe that life is bigger than what it seems, that we all seek and believe in some type of purpose. And one way in which we do that is by forming communities no matter where we are, by asking who we are, by giving of ourselves. I think the most important thing we can give, even beyond money and things, is dignity. To do so is to believe that every life matters, no matter our differences and stations in life. At one point during the film there was a homeless woman being interviewed who recounted a time when she was starving and freezing on the streets in the dead of winter, overlooked and ignored by all the passerby's. And then 4 puppies appeared, wandering orphaned and aimlessly, and suddenly those people who looked through her gave pause. That's when they stopped--to rescue the dogs. If life is everyone, than we are doing a disservice to it when we don't pay our respects, when we don't see the worth of every human being we encounter.