Our pain belongs to us
but it is not ours alone.

Nor does it only reach our loved ones
across the distance at which we keep ourselves from them.

Nor does it only touch the strangers we have slighted in the street.

Our pain is a collective. A single body that moves through each generation. That beats in every single mortal human heart. There are two things that most connect us, every one of us to the other: our suffering, and the desire to be free of it.