In the TV room at my parents' house, there is a huge map of the world plastered onto the wall. It's actually wallpaper, made by National Geographic. I had the same thing stuck on my bedroom wall as a child, in our old house on Brompton, with the Soviet Union outlined in red. I wonder if it was a given at the National Geographic office that the USSR would be outlined in red. The house my parents live in today was built five years after the end of the Cold War, and on the new map, it's Russia that is outlined in that menacing, communist color. Things may be a bit different on this new map, but it's the same as the old in one important way: it still shows the same big world.




I love to stare at it. I always have. When I was a kid, I stared at it and dreamed about places I would go one day, when I was grown. When I stare at the wall today, it's with different eyes, still dreaming, but more about the places I've been, rather than just places I'd like to see. I draw invisible lines with those eyes around Europe, around the Balkans and Turkey, with a few dots in Asia, and a small sliver around East Africa and up into parts of Ethiopia. My invisible circles seem so small when drawn on the wall. They only make me realize how little of the human story I've actually experienced so far.

There are so many places in the world. There are so many people. Every single one of those people has a life, which is simply a four letter word for a bunch of stories, bundled together and constantly unfolding into a single, succinct drama. All of these dramas together form the greater human story, the thing I yearn to know as I stare at that wall. It's just a map, but it's what the map represents that captures me. The world is simply billions of unfolding dramas known as human lives, which are simply trillions of little stories, and each person is at the center of the overarching saga: the Story, with a capital S. It is deflating to realize that it's impossible for everyone to be the main character of the Story, because that means that you can't be the main character. But it's also uplifting, because you realize that you can be, and that we all are.

When I was a little kid, around kindergarten age, I used to think about God, and the universe, and what it meant when my dad would answer my questions about things that have no answer. He kindly explained that God had no beginning and no end. That's what it meant when we talked about eternity, and Heaven, and all the other mind blowing concepts that a six-year-old isn't expected to contemplate after saying his nightly prayers. It wasn't scary or overwhelming, since my dad seemed to understand it perfectly. It's just that God never began; nor would God ever end. And if you lived a good life and said your prayers, you would never end, either. That was a nice thought, because I certainly didn't want to end. It made perfect sense to me as a six-year-old, much more than it does to me today at 24.

The reason it made sense back then is because I realized what must happen: all of us -- each and every one of us -- must get to live the entire life of every single other person who has ever lived on the planet. Not just the six billion living on the planet today, but every life that has ever been lived, ever, in human history -- meaning that what seemed like a beginning and ending story was actually The Neverending Story. We all got to live all those lives, which, when added all up, explained eternity. I get to live your entire life; you get to live mine. I get to live your mother's entire life; she gets to live your father's. I get to live the entire life of the man who lived in my neighbor's house before I was born; he gets to live the entire life of a woman who lived in Italy 300 years ago. I get to live the entire life of a Chinese person who lived 1,000 years ago; and so on and so forth.

Forever and ever, amen.

Do you see? That's what my dad meant when he told me that there was no beginning and no end. And when it was all said and done, we would all end up being not me and you and she and he, but the same person, because we'd all know everyone's stories, and thus, we'd all know the same Story. Heady stuff, isn't it? I thought this when I was six.

Back then, the coolest part of this whole belief was that it guaranteed I'd get to be Michael Jordan at least once. Of course, I wasn't too stoked on being Hitler, but I figured that when it came my turn to be Hitler, I'd do things a little differently, since he wasn't very nice to people.

I also used to wonder whether or not what I believed to be my life was actually a dream I was having while asleep in my real kindergarten class somewhere else, in some other year, as someone else entirely. I think my parents fed me peyote as a child.

Why did I stop believing things like this? Maybe I never did. Maybe I still believe it. Maybe that's my understanding of God.

Maybe that's what causes me to close my eyes and take those breaths, deep and contemplative breaths, that fill my body not with oxygen but with passion -- to learn, and live and experience, not just my story, but everyone's stories. The Story. Maybe that's why I still love to stare at that wall, and always will.