Lost Together

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

I want you to think about where you are right now. Are you standing? Are you sitting? Well, you're on a planet going around a star, in a galaxy with hundreds of millions more. Protected by this thin blanket of air that hugs the Earth's surface. It feels so big from where we sit, yet it's also small in the cosmic perspective. But here we are, at the edge of existence itself.

Maybe you're sad. Maybe you're lonely. Maybe your life isn't going that well. You're mad, and you want others to know it. I sometimes feel that way too. Maybe you're upset because others seem to be getting ahead while you're falling behind. Maybe you're really far ahead, and you haven't stopped to catch your breath.

Maybe you're a mother who came to America without papers to give her son or daughter a chance at living life in America—the country that, against all odds, came together and created a stage of endless opportunity and wonder. Hollywood. Wall Street. The Man on the Moon. Jazz in New Orleans. Cowboys who rode into sunsets that promised there was always somewhere else to go, always another chance to start over. The neighbor who brings casserole when someone dies, not asking if you're Republican or Democrat, just knowing you need to eat. Road trips across the country where strangers become friends at truck stops, where Southern hospitality means the waitress calls you “honey” and means it.

Maybe you're scared. Maybe you're angry that mother is here at all, because you feel stuck. Maybe you think if there were less of them, there'd be more for you.

But here's what I know: we're all here together on this same impossible sphere, breathing the same recycled air that dinosaurs breathed, that Caesar breathed, that your ancestors breathed when they looked up at these same stars and felt this same bewilderment at being alive. The same air the cowboys breathed when they slept under stars so bright they could navigate by them. The same air that carries the smell of barbecue across a Southern town, calling everyone to the same table.

That mother without papers? She's walking the same wire you are, trying not to fall, trying to keep her balance while the ground shifts beneath her feet. She doesn't understand the immigration system any more than you understand the economy that left you behind. Nobody designed these systems. They emerged from millions of decisions, fears, hopes, accidents of history that seemed like good ideas at the time.

You're angry at her, or maybe you're angry for her, but really you're angry at the same thing: the machine that none of us controls, that sorts some up and others down for reasons that feel arbitrary because they are arbitrary. You didn't choose where you were born. Neither did she. Neither did her child who might grow up to cure the disease that kills you, or might take the job you wanted, or might teach your grandkid to throw a baseball, or might just be another person trying to figure out how to be human in a world that changes faster than humans can change.

The tech billionaire in his compound? He's just as lost. His algorithms can't solve the loneliness that wakes him at 3 AM. He's building escape pods from a prison that exists inside his own head. He's forgotten what every small-town mechanic knows: sometimes things can't be fixed, just held together long enough to get you home.

Maybe you're reading this on your phone while your kid plays—or doesn't play, just stares at their own screen. And you feel that loss, that absence of something you can't quite name. The sound of children playing, that ancient music that told us everything was basically okay even when it wasn't. Little League games where everyone knew your name. Block parties that lasted past midnight. Front porches where problems got solved or at least shared. It's quiet now, and in that quiet you can hear something else: the hum of machines pretending to be human, humans pretending to be machines, everyone pretending to understand what's happening when nobody does.

The conservative who wants to go back, the progressive who wants to go forward—they're both trying to navigate the same impossible now. There is no back to the frontier that never really existed the way we remember it. There is no forward to the utopia that never arrives. There's just this moment where we're all here together, walking a wire nobody strung over an abyss nobody dug, like those old circus performers who came through small towns promising wonder and sometimes delivering it.

Some of us were born lucky. Some weren't. Most of us got some mix of both. But none of us chose our hand. We're all playing cards we were dealt by a dealer who doesn't exist, in a game nobody invented, for stakes nobody fully understands. Like a poker game in a Western saloon where everyone's bluffing and nobody wants to be the first to fold.

That anger you feel? It's real. That fear? It's valid. That loneliness? Everyone feels it, even the people who seem to have it all figured out. Especially them.

We're the only species we know of that looks up at the stars and asks “why?” The only creatures who can conceive of justice, of beauty, of meaning. The only ones who can feel homesick for places we've never been, nostalgic for futures that won't happen, connected to strangers we'll never meet. The only ones who stop to help when we see someone broken down on the side of the highway, because that's what you do.

And here we are, using this incredible capacity to be cruel to each other over differences we didn't choose, to build systems that hurt the people they're supposed to help, to pretend we understand things that are beyond understanding.

The mother without papers knows something you might have forgotten: how precious this place is. She risked everything to get here, to give her child a chance at this strange American experiment. Not because America is perfect—she knows better than most how imperfect it is. But because it's a place where nobody really knows what's going on, which means anything might still be possible. Where a peanut farmer can become President. Where a bartender can become a Congresswoman. Where the guy who fixes your car might have a PhD, and the woman serving your coffee might be writing the next great American novel on her breaks.

That's the real American dream: not that the streets are paved with gold, but that nobody actually knows how the streets got paved, which means maybe, just maybe, we can pave them differently.

You're not falling behind. There is no behind. There's no ahead. There's just here, on this planet, in this moment, with these other confused humans, all of us pretending to know where we're going while the universe expands in directions we can't even point to.

Maybe what we need isn't answers but better questions. Not “how do we fix this?” but “how do we hold each other while it's broken?” Not “who's to blame?” but “who needs help?” Not “what's the plan?” but “what's the next kind thing we can do?” The questions neighbors used to ask: “You doing alright?” “Need anything from the store?” “Want to sit a while?”

The children will play again when we remember how to play—when we stop pretending we know the rules, stop insisting others follow rules we made up, stop keeping score in a game that has no winner. When we remember what every kid who ever played stickball in the street knows: the point isn't winning, it's playing until the streetlights come on and your mother calls you home.

We're all here, breathing this same thin air, standing on this same small rock, vast and tiny at once. Lost together. Which is different from being lost alone.

That's something. Maybe that's everything.