Adrift and alone ...

Can't say it better so I'll quote it ...

"In terms of our inner experience, we often think of ourselves a little like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, adrift and alone on a vast empty sea.

Thankfully, the reality is usually quite different. When we raise our awareness above the gunwales of our own experience, we see a vast flotilla of people inhabiting the same ocean, being buffeted by the same swells. While there is much that differentiates us as individuals, and no two peoples’ experience is identical, we also share much in common.

We are linked by our common biology, physiology, narratives and by substantial similarities in basic levels of social existence. We live, love, and raise families. We judge, we hope, we fear and we dream. In short, we share a common humanity. That which we consider to be our very own unique and personal secret thoughts, feelings, hopes, joys, concerns and fears, are, in reality, not so dissimilar from the unique, personal and secret thoughts of others. These factors lie at the very core of our own personal humanity, and the humanity of those around us: whatever is the most personal is indeed the most common."

Michael J. Cavanagh, Ph.D. and Anthony M. Grant, Ph.D.