a question on ”being”

A question on being :

I am a very private person and sometimes i feel guilty for not sharing more of myself with my friends. I like to think that what i have been through doesn't define me, but sometimes it feels like all i am and i wonder if it is possible for someone

to know me without knowing of these problems i carry with me. I want to think that my friends know me, but i do not tell them of what i have endured. I feel like i am building a barrier between me and them. I know that suffering is a neutral state of being and that everyone is suffering. So this leads to my question; do you think it is possible to truly know someone without knowing their suffering?

Dear Private,

You’ve been on my mind this whole week. One of the remarkable things I spiral into again and again in this work of answering, is how we are all asking each other the same questions.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about genetic convergence– cases where two species evolve towards the same solution, separately and independently of each other. Bats and dolphins, for example, have both developed echolocation. One moves through sky, and the other moves through water, but they both found their way to see their sounds, in order to move through the dark. Within different bodies and different landscapes, they found the way to the same answer.

Genetic convergence is an example of Ramsey theory, which is a branch of math that studies the underlying structures and patterns of systems. Ramsey theory tells us that if we gather enough data, a pattern will emerge. Math is nice like that because it doesn’t matter how you feel about it. The answer to an equation is true. So you can be certain because of this, that there is no such thing as chaos, or entropy, or randomization, only that you are looking at it on a scale that is too small to see the order. According to Ramsey theory, everything, every moment, every mystery, is accounted for in a larger symmetry. All mistakes are corrected. If something seems wrong, it is just part of a larger picture.

In this way, i am certain that we are living different lives, but reaching for the same conclusions.