Wrong? Wrong.

Once again, it all seems so very simple. Most of us don't know who we are, who the others are, what they want or what we want. We have our heads filled with other people's ideas and lose sight of who we are ourselves and why we might even be here to begin with. Granted, all of these "problems", if that's what you want to call them, are not of the simple kind, and the answers to the questions they raise are not always comfortable either.

Some psychologists say we're simply running from ourselves, and while it may not be absolutely true, there is a certain relative truth to it still. We all lead overly hectic lives, lives of non-stop whatever: work, activities, events, lunches, social events, home repairs, car repairs, children's activities, parents' night, Sunday school, church, sports events ... the list just goes on and on and the fuller our lives become, the emptier everything seems to be. We go off in search of more and more, never satisfied and never content. We're tired, worn out, run down, stressed, and in the end, depressed. Oh what a wonderful life we've made for ourselves.

The simplicity of the solution is baffling: we've fallen victim to quantity, we have no understanding of quality; it's not just that less is more, rather at bottom we have to be different. And there we have the rub. That's what we ultimately fear the most (other than death, I suppose, but we'll leave that to Heidegger): ourselves. I think we're so adamant about what we "believe" because we know, deep down, we don't know what to believe anymore, we're simply afraid that what we've been led to believe really doesn't have the value we were told it had. Welcome to modern life.

Yes, in the end, it's all so very simple. There is no leader, no political party, no company, no organization, no club, no group, no movement that is going to save you from yourself. What the deluded rugged individualists have right is that when all is said and done, it's just you; you are all you have to fall back on. What they have absolutely wrong is that it ends there. The fact that in the end there is only us is what each and every one of us on this planet have in common.

What we have in common should bring us together not drive us apart. We should find comfort in the fact that everyone else is really not so different from ourselves. If we don't - and apparently we don't - all that's holding us back is fear. Fear that we're not who or what we think we are. What we should know, however, is that we are not really different than anyone else. If you ever want to get over your fears, you have to face them.