David McElroy

“What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about life so far?”

The question was deceptively simple, but I wanted to give a useful answer. A high school student told me his teacher had assigned him to ask this question to 10 random adults — outside his family — and then write about what they said.

There’s so much I could say to that question, because I’ve learned so much. I constantly feel as though I have to throw out at least half of what I’ve learned and start over, because I keep finding flaws in beliefs I used to accept as obvious. Much of what I write here is an attempt to chronicle what I’m learning and discarding as I change. What could I possibly say now to this teen?

“Love and beauty,” I finally said after I thought about it for a long minute.

As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew this was going to be hard to explain. The teen looked confused. So I tried again.

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I feel most alone when I’m in groups of people. I’ve always known that — and I’ve talked to others who feel the same — but I might have figured out tonight why I feel this way.

I grew up expecting an idealized version of humanity. Maybe it was the futuristic utopias that I saw in much of the science fiction I read and watched. Maybe it was the idealistic spirit of the age in which I grew up — a time when there seemed to be a widespread belief that an amazing future was right around the corner.

Or maybe it was just something about my own personality. I wanted the world to be amazing — and I wanted to be the one to make it amazing. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to lead the world. I wanted to be at the forefront of creating an amazing, loving and humane world.

Everything I imagined seemed so right and good — and so achievable.

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Imagine living in a world where everybody sees black and white and shades of gray — and you realize that you’re different from everyone else, because you see the world in vivid colors instead.

The experience of color is amazing, but how frustrating would it be if you couldn’t explain to others what you saw? What if others didn’t understand, because they had no frame of reference? How painful would it be to want to share that experience of color — but you couldn’t share it with anyone? How lonely would that be?

For much of my early life, I assumed everyone experienced emotions in the same intense ways that I do. When I discovered otherwise, I was confused and struggled to explain how my interior experience of painful emotion works. I’ve almost given up, because so few are even interested.

I was reminded of this again tonight because of what I felt during a movie. It was just a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, so it’s not something most people would have seen as intensely emotional, but interaction between two characters struck me in that oddly intense way. Two characters each experienced painful longing for the other, even though they couldn’t be together.

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