To Perceive is to Live...

Ultimately, as in all experience, no clear line marks off what is "mine" from what I lived through other.

                                      - Arthur Frank, At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness

Arthur Frank states these words in narrating his illness experience. He comes to terms with his illness through others' experiences of their own. If all experiences, yours and mine, merge into one and can never be "marked off," what separates mine from yours is but illusory. We believe that one's store of experiences defines and gives an individual identity. We often see and perceive the world through the knowledge and wisdom we have acquired though our experiences, but we fail to understand that our perception of our own selves is made possible only through others. The self can be perceived and concretised only through others. Frank's words only disturb the complacent self, and makes one become acutely aware of the indispensability of people around us. We realise that by ". . . all experience is an arch . . .", Tennyson meant the collective experiences of men and women. If each one's experience is adding to the wholeness of human experience, each experience becomes significant and the need to validate one's own as worthier over others vanishes. This realisation awakens us to the vast sea of human wisdom in which each one of us is a drop.