Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
I was riding on the light rail in Charlotte after a concert one summer night last year.
The train was packed. The show was at the football stadium downtown, so imagine a sea of people pouring out into the streets afterwards. Some headed for their parked cars, others hailed rides, many walked to the nearby light rail station and jumped on the train, toward their homes or to parked cars along the train’s route.
My mind was still buzzing from the music and the energy from the sea of people swaying and dancing to the music in unison. Now the same throngs walked along the streets, like a marching ants army, spirits raised high, conversations flowing. A couple of guys had set up a percussion set with trash cans and buckets on a street and were making a lovely racket, while another couple of streets down a saxophonist added sinewy curves to the night.
After marching several blocks with the crowd, I made it to the station, shuffled onto the train, found a spot and stood among the crush of people.
The train began moving and I closed my eyes for a moment and thought of the existential experience of being human. A philosophical wave rode over me on this perfect, warm summer night, where the colors spilled outside the lines and were made more vibrant by raucous live music.
I felt a steady stream of energy as the fading music coursed through my veins while myriad human voices chatted around me, all stitched into the clackety clack and the swoosh of the train in motion.
This moment, well, also many times before in different situations and locations, evoked a single word that defines, in my knotted world view, the crux of human experience. Just one word? Wait a minute. And does it define the whole of human experience? One word? Yes, I say. What word holds the weight of the heaving, hulking human mass?
I’ll let you ponder upon and about that a bit. Think of all the things that delineate us from the other living entities on our floating marble. Emotions, anxieties, anger, lust, envy, love, hate, wanting, giving, nurturing, destroying, narcissism, selfishness, selflessness… I can go on.
Of course, many other creatures nurture their young, many likely also have emotions and exhibit other humanlike behavior. But only us fragile buggers come with a mind laden with social, environmental or self-inflicted trials and travails that forever mark us. Evolve us. Guide us. Manipulate us. Stumble us.
This one word also encourages exploration of the micros and the macros of life, if you will, and it’s a mash of a geometry of emptiness and a biology of fulfillment.
It is at once physical and utterly abstract. A word that demarcates boundaries. It is cold and warm.
Here’s a hint. What might you say when the raw emotions of those around you crowd out your own thoughts? Or when you are in a crowd, like on a fully loaded train, and you yearn for some air? You may think of a simple sentence.
You close your eyes and think, I need some space.
Now you’re onto something. Now you are triangulating. Now you have stumbled upon that word. A word that wraps the entirety of human condition into five letters.
Space.
That’s what it all comes down to, an all-encompassing little word. We all need personal space, emotional space, a warm and cozy physical space. A joint to call all our own. Call it a firewall or a portal. You can block things out or let them in. This joint is empty, but it is also full, all depending on your line of sight, your views and biases.
It’s about inner and outer space. In the continuing narratives of my favorite sci fi franchise, the final frontier beckons, always, but the real frontier is the one that we will never conquer or understand fully, and that is the human frontier. That is an exploration incomplete. It is a space that is wholly and uniquely defined by each individual.
Finding your intersection of calm and contentment, happy and alive, while entangled among people and caught in a maelstrom of opposing forces. That is your goal. That is your exploratory mission.
When and if people can develop the intellectual and emotional maturity required to inhabit this space with others and learn to give way or take the lead in support, of course depending on the situation or condition, the whole of humanity will be the beneficiary.
There would be a lot less conflict and dissonance, that’s for sure. And a lot more sharedness.
Finding that juncture, that elusive space, is where clarity and meaning converge. This joint doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t require reaching out to some invisible god, but it is about creating a connectedness.
When you dive into that five-letter word, the result can be confinement or vast openness, depending on your focus and effort. It’s right there, within your reach.
Space. The human frontier.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine.
Contact: [email protected]
X: @ShuklaWrites
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