all that had happened

Reflecting on a, let's just call it different experience at work this am. Completing an exercise meant to put faces on faceless colleagues, had to contemplate the highs and lows of life. Then had to share these extremes aloud, and listen to the sharing of others.

Always considered pride to be the biggest of my issues. It shouldn't be the case, but it is, that I need to be reminded that the world does not revolve around me. That when I do not see a person for some time, that that person did, in fact, still have his/her own thoughts and life that continued in my absence. That prior to meeting me, people have their own histories and experiences.

I'm not so prideful that I believe these things shouldn't be or aren't true. What is interesting to me is the feeling I feel when I contemplate the personal lives of others: sadness.

I'm not sure why that is, other than because I want to be there at every one of their minutes. I want to have experienced those highs and lows with them. This is true, apparently, even for people I have little strong emotion for. It is not pride in me forcing me to believe that I am some center of some universe. Rather, I am beginning to see this as sadness that I could not be part of it -- not sadness for them for not having me, but sadness for me not having them.