Letter 5: One Light Many Missions

“It is so hard being human, can we please be kind with ourselves and each other.”

-Me

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Dear Future Human,

Right now, I am feeling conflicted about whether to continue diving into neuroscience and perception, or pause and share more about myself. A part of me thinks I should maintain the momentum of the prior letters and continue with expanding on the science. Another part of me is called to tell you a little bit more about my personal journey—who I am and what’s driving me to write to you. To let you in. My life’s journey has been immersed in pain, awe and gratitude. It is a journey that began in childhood: a journey of deep connection that led first to despair, and ultimately, to my purpose.

I was four and a half years old when I first experienced the grace that would inform and shape the rest of my life. My mom and I were sitting on a bus, on our way to visit my grandparents. I was particularly excited, having not seen them since our move to another part of town. As I sat there, I began to curiously observe the people around me. My eyes rested on an old man sitting directly across from me. Slowly, I moved my gaze from his stubby gray beard to his wrinkled face and up to his grey eyes. Then suddenly I found myself inside his body. I was looking through his eyes, feeling his sadness and loneliness as if I was living it myself.

Just as abruptly, I was back in my own body, looking at him.

I continued looking around me. This time, my eyes caught the sight of a pretty woman sitting at the back of the bus. Examining her face, her jewelry and her hair, again, I suddenly found myself inside her body, seeing through her eyes and feeling through her heart.

When I returned to my body, a thought crossed my mind: “Oh now I understand. We all have different faces and bodies, but the same thing is looking through the eyes.”

There were no light bulbs flashing or bells ringing. The whole experience didn’t last for longer than a minute—yet its imprint has stayed with me ever since. From that day forward, this knowing informed how I moved through life. It shaped the way I perceived “others” and myself, the way I felt us, thought about us, and related to us. There was always an “us in me.” It wasn’t something I consciously carried—it simply became woven into my being. That simple, startling recognition—that behind every pair of eyes lives the same essence, the same yearning—has guided me ever since.

Years later, after my family moved from Israel to the United States, this deep sensitivity—the ability to feel people’s feelings as if they were my own—became a serious liability for me. Several months after we arrived in the US, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I remember sitting alone in front of the TV for hours, crying hysterically, watching the images of his assassination. Although I was only eleven years old, and still a foreigner who knew little about him, I felt his loss to my core; it was as if a part of me died.

In the following years, my mind, heart and soul were continually bombarded by TV images of dying people in Vietnam, starving children in Biafra and the myriads of violent actions in the States against Black people, demonstrating students, and gay people. There had been no television in Israel, and actually seeing how many people were suffering around the world overwhelmed and consumed me. I could not separate them from me; their suffering was mine. Everyone around me seemed able to go on with their lives, unbothered by suffering that felt unbearable to me. I could not. Tortured and grief-stricken, unable to share my distress with anyone, I gradually began to feel alone and disconnected from the world.

At fourteen, I stopped watching TV or socializing. After school, I withdrew into my room to do my homework and read. I focused on philosophy and history, desperately looking for answers. Reading helped me for one year, but the pain of isolation became too much. By fifteen I reached a devastating conclusion: I did not belong on this planet. Since no one else seemed to feel as deeply as I did, I must be from somewhere else—an outsider in a world I did not understand.

So, if I didn’t belong here, then I shouldn’t be here at all.

I decided to end my suffering. The plan was simple. I would pretend to be sick, stay home from school, and when my mother went out shopping, I would climb to the roof of our building and jump. The decision brought me great relief—a sense of freedom from the unbearable weight of the world.

The day arrived. When my mother left the apartment, I got dressed and began to put my shoes on. I remember feeling numb but resolute. I started to put my second shoe on when suddenly a force hit my chest. Startled and disoriented, I fell backwards onto the bed. Then a voice bellowed within me, “No! There is purpose.”

Immediately, images of suffering people flooded my mind. It was everywhere. At first, I felt overwhelmed, but slowly, I began to realize that what I am feeling is not just my pain; it was the pain of humanity. My suffering became a doorway into the collective human experience. Like a movie, frame-by-frame, the images seemed to tell a story of an empath who has been given the gift of acutely feeling others so that she can naturally understand them and help alleviate their suffering. The pain had a purpose. My suffering was not a curse—it was a calling. Once I could contextualize it, the pain no longer owned me. I was connected to suffering—but from a place of awareness, not helplessness.

I chose to live! To live not just for myself, but to fulfill the purpose that had been revealed to me.

It took a while to re-enter my social fabric, and when I did, it was with unwavering clarity, focus and confidence. But I still did not know how to use my empathic abilities in an effective way. One thing I did realize is that since we are all one, the better I understood myself, the more I could help others.

So, I devoted myself to learning—not just about people, but about the mind, about perception, about the invisible forces that shape us, and about myself. I came to see that much of human suffering does not stem from the events themselves, but from the filters through which we interpret them—the unconscious patterns we develop, the stories we tell ourselves, the past we unknowingly project onto the present.

I came to understand that we are not broken—we are conditioned. And we can become aware of how our conditioning no longer serves us and forge new pathways that will.

I am here writing to you now because I deeply believe that we are not meant to be imprisoned by the unconscious patterns from our past. I am here because I know, firsthand, what it feels like to be overwhelmed by the crushing weight of the world. I know what it means to feel helpless, utterly alone, and disconnected from everything and everyone. And I also know that there is another truth—one that is quieter but more real:

We are not powerless. We are not alone.

There is meaning in our struggles. There is wisdom in our wounds. And within each of us, there exists the capacity to heal—not just ourselves, but the world around us.

With deep humility, respect and care,

Ronit

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