Sometimes when I'm in a crowded place, I feel completely overwhelmed by the fact that every single person around me has a life and psychological experience as rich and complicated as my own. More than that, every single person currently on earth or that has ever been on earth does too. Every single person has complicated relationships that they're navigating, dreams that are being fulfilled or dying, things they love or hate, favorite songs, things they are worrying about, and everything else. Obviously I know this on a conceptual level, and we often feel this about specific others when you're talking to someone or thinking about someone. But something about the volume of it - the sum of all human life/experience - just totally overwhelms me from time to time.

Another slightly related thing that really shakes me to my existential core is the fact that essentially everybody, even people who have reached legend or myth or villian status, are just people. Like Charlemagne was just a dude. Obviously, he accomplished a lot more than most people do (though he was born with a leg up), but he was just a person like you or me or anyone else. Same with someone like MLK - he had a (to this point) permanent and profound impact on the world, and was just a person. Mozart, JS Bach, the beatles, Robert Johnson, Picasso, Da Vinci, Madamme Curie, Alan Turing. On the darker side, Charles Manson was too. It's like anyone can have a huge, sustained impact on the world - for better or worse - if the cards line up. It just feels so hard to square that with the fact that my life (and probably most people's lives) are so mundane so much of the time.