I’m sitting at the Des Moines airport waiting area watching the sun rise, and having a (sleep deprived) experience I think many people have. Sometimes I feel so detached that I imagine I’m the only actual person alive, that everything around me is an illusion. The Truman Show and the Matrix are two great film examples of this. But then this often will trigger the flip side… that everyone around me is just like me… carrying a vast lifetime of experience. I look at each person seated around me, and I imagine a massive bubble over their head, filled with everything they know: all their rich and intricate relationships, memories, emotions, knowledge and dreams. Everyone is living a unique reality unknowable to anyone else.

Then I take it further and I realize there are billions of us having these complex and intimate lives. Right now there’s someone riding their bike through the streets of Paris, and eating a mango in India, and nervously preparing for a first date in Havana, and nodding off in front of their laptop in Des Moines.