The most important lesson I have learned is that I can't separate myself from the world.
It wasn't just an intellectual lesson, but was emotional surrender to interrelatedness, complete with the possibility of pain, of loss, of not being in control. I'd always been oversensitive and an overthinker, often fearful of the future and mentally planning how to become independent instead of relying on others. But no matter how far I went, there was always another way someone could disrupt my ideal solitude, my comfortable isolation. I hit a point where I broke down, faced my fear of uncertainty, and somehow came out embracing my interdependence with the world and the billions of humans living together in it. My life since is the unfolding of that realization- I went from disliking public transit, imagining being trapped or infected by diseases, to choosing to ride the bus to work, enjoing the chance to encounter new amazing individuals each day; and similarly many other changes in my thinking.
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