Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

worked to heal. We can seek understanding with those we disagree
with. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. To understand all is to
forgive all. To love all is to be at peace with all, including yourself.
Take something you care about deeply, a possession you cherish,
a person you love, or an experience that means a lot to you. Now take
that feeling, that radiating warmth that comes up when you think
about it, and consider how every single person, even murderers on
death row, even the jerk who just shoved you in the supermarket, has
that same feeling about something in their lives. Together, you share
that. Not only do you share it, but you share it with everyone who has
ever lived. It connects you to Cleopatra and Napoleon and Frederick
Douglass.
You can do the same with your pain. As bad as you might feel in a
given moment, this too is a shared feeling, a connection with others.
The man stepping outside to take a walk after an argument with his
spouse. The mother worrying about her child, the one who seems to
always be in trouble. The merchant stressing over where the money
will come from—How will I keep going? Two siblings grieving the
loss of a parent. The average citizen following the news, hoping their
country will avoid an unnecessary war.
No one is alone, in suffering or in joy. Down the street, across the
ocean, in another language, someone else is experiencing nearly the
exact same thing. It has always been and always will be thus.
You can even use this to connect more deeply with yourself and
your own life. The moon you’re looking at tonight is the same moon
you looked at as a scared young boy or girl, it’s the same you’ll look at
when you’re older—in moments of joy and in pain—and it’s the same
that your children will look at in their own moments and their own
lives.
When you step back from the enormity of your own immediate
experience—whatever it is—you are able to see the experience of
others and either connect with them or lessen the intensity of your
own pain. We are all strands in a long rope that stretches back
countless generations and ties together every person in every country
on every continent. We are all thinking and feeling the same things,
we are all made of and motivated by the same things. We are all
stardust. And no one needs this understanding more than the