Our Little Universe

It can be a little overwhelming when you think about how many people there are in this world. True, most of us don’t think about it all. We’re pretty busy just thinking about ourselves most of the time. If we were honest, truly honest, we’d admit that our thoughts and concerns are primarily consumed with just our own little world and that’s it. By that I mean those things that we see and know on a regular basis: our family…our friends…our co-workers…our jobs…our health. Even this much smaller personal universe is usually narrowed down, moment by moment, based on what we are seeing or doing at any particular time.

I deal with this issue quite a bit. Spending so many weeks on the road, it’s common to feel myself being distanced from others, even my wife and kids. It’s not that I don’t think about them, because I do quite a bit. I worry, I miss them, I pray and I wonder what they are doing when I’m not there.

Still, I don’t think about them twenty-four hours a day. I don’t even think about them sixteen hours a day (that’s if I was lucky enough to actually sleep for eight hours). No, there are too many diversions. The work I am doing on that particular trip, the television show I am watching in the evening as I relax, the minutiae of day to day life. All these things are a distraction from those I care most about.

I am also 100% certain that the same goes for them. I would expect no less. They have other things going on. They don’t sit around all day long looking at my photo, crying for me to be there.


That’s not evil, cold or shallow. That’s just life.

We only see, hear and know what we experience ourselves. We have our own beliefs and thoughts. We do not share the same space at any given time, so our view on the world is always changing and always different. We are like snowflakes. No two humans are alike.

Every experience affects us in some way, changes our perception. We comprehend things differently. Take any ten people to an art museum to look at an abstract painting and they will give you different opinions. Some percentage of the group might come to a general consensus, but no doubt the particular descriptions will be slightly to very different.

People say they know each other. Husbands and wives, parents and children, even best friends…they say things like “no one knows them like I do.” That may well be true, but you don’t know them like they know themselves. Contrary to the popular myth of complete and total disclosure in a relationship, we don’t tell each other everything. We keep some opinions to ourselves…and that’s a good thing.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m being paranoid. Just because I have things in my head that I don’t tell anyone, doesn’t mean everyone else is so sneaky. I t’s probably just me.

If that’s what you are thinking, you’re missing my point. I’m not talking about deep, dark, dirty secrets (although a good number of people have those). I’m talking about the fact that there is no way we could possibly share every thought we have with others.

First, there are just too many (at least I would hope so…thinking is kind of important). Second, we don’t believe anyone else would care about some of our random thoughts and opinions (and that is almost definitely true). Third, we generally don’t like arguments or disagreements. (I said “generally,” because some of us love to be argumentative. It’s kind of a hobby).

Even in the best relationships, there are moments. If you are married, you’ve had them (and don’t lie and say you haven’t). It’s that moment when your spouse does something, even a minor something, that just hits you the wrong way. You look at them and for a brief second think, “who is this person?”


Of course, five minutes later you look at them and fall in love all over again (at least hopefully), but the inescapable fact is that it’s part of being human to be different. We aren’t supposed to agree all the time. We get on each other’s nerves. We are individuals.

There are lots of shades of gray in life. Most serious issues can’t be decided with a simple “yes” or “no” answer (despite the fact that we desperately try to do that). We think every peg should fit in the round hole; every decision should be “one size fits all.”


Despite the individuality of our thoughts, and the uniqueness of our personalities, most of us have religious, political and ethical views based in some part on what our parents or relatives taught us growing up. There’s a good chance that if your parents were Catholic or Baptist, Atheist or Muslim; that’s what you will believe too.

Every family does things a little differently in their own homes. Some families are “ketchup on scrambled eggs” people. Others make their beds every day or sleep in pajamas and socks. There’s a joke about a young wife who started to cook a ham and cut the ends off before she put in the oven. Her husband asked why she did it like that and she said that was the way her mother cooked ham. When they spoke to the mother later, they asked why she did it that way and she said that it was the way her mother had cooked ham. The curiosity was too much for them, so they called the great-grandmother to ask why she did it that way. She said, “My baking dish was short.”

Ugly traits get passed down as well, like bigotry, racism, abuse, and male pattern baldness. We may think for ourselves, but we were probably nudged strongly in a particular direction by someone at some point. We aren’t forced to take that path, but if the trail has been blazed already, it’s much easier to follow.

Last year during the presidential election, I found it interesting that my fifth grade daughter came in from school talking about politics. Some of the kids in her class had discussed who they wanted to be President. They had a very heated discussion, and all believed that they were right because their parents were for that person or political party. Talking about the kids who differed from her opinion (and her opinion was my opinion), my daughter even said “how can they be so stupid?” I imagined the same conversation was going on all over West Oak Ridge, and in many of those homes we were the ones being described as “stupid.”

It’s amazing our arrogance. Anyone who doesn’t believe like we do must be “stupid.” We can’t usually agree with our spouse or friends about where we want to go for dinner, or what movie we want to see, but we feel we have the intelligence, logic and justification to force our political, religious and world views on everyone else. That’s a scary thing.

How do we find that perfect balance between confidence in our own personal beliefs and mutual respect for others who feel differently? Humanity has not done well with this in the past. Some of the most dangerous people in history were usually zealots; obsessed with their own superiority and usually deluded by a perceived “greater calling” in the name of God or some higher power. Both Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan used God as justification for their atrocities. The American government and religious leaders decimated entire tribes of Native American’s for their “heathen” lifestyle. Indian children were taken from their parents so they could be educated in the proper Christian way. It was considered the “white man’s burden.”


What’s sometimes hard for us to comprehend, at least if we take the time to think about it, is that none of the people who did these terrible things thought that what they were doing was wrong. In fact, they probably thought that they had done the right thing until the day they died. Today, as we live under the continued threat of terror attacks, we believe our enemies to be pure evil, while they think that they are doing the will of God.

Stand around any school playground for a while and you’ll probably see a fight breakout. They might not even remember what it was all about an hour later, but at the time each kid is sure of one thing; they are right and the other is wrong. Same goes for almost any divorce, argument between friends, or disagreement in a boardroom. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong.

Sadly, no voice from the heavens booms down to tell us which is which. No magical halo appears over the good guy; no devil horns for the bad. Both sides will likely walk away still believing in their own unquestionable veracity.

It comes down to the fact that we each live in our own little universe. We see what we want and hear what we want. We view the world through eyes clouded by personal perceptions.

Am I saying that we shouldn’t stand up for what we believe in? Absolutely not. If we don’t voice our opinions, nothing would ever get done. Society would stagnate without change. The difference is between having a mutual, informed, respectful debate and a stubborn, angry standoff which will likely lead to escalating violence.

Respecting other people, even when we feel that they are wrong, is one of the hardest things we have to do as humans. So hard, in fact, that we simply don’t try very hard.

It’s just so much easier to call them “stupid.”