When you removed yourself from your own thoughts and stopped to look at people—really look at them—you saw something surprising. Each of them—from the businessmen, phones pressed to their ears, loafers sidestepping puddles, to the tourists who lingered on street corners wondering which direction to walk—held a certain vulnerability about them. Did their parents love them? Did a man—a woman? And if the person who loved them left, how immense would their pain be? We busy ourselves trying not to be lonely, trying to find purpose in careers, and lovers, and children, but at any moment, those things we work so hard to possess could be taken from us. I feel better knowing I’m not alone, that the whole world is as fragile and lonely as I am.