This Is What You Belong To

In 1950, a man grieving his young son who had just died of polio got a letter from Albert Einstein. Now, one might think that as a man of science, Einstein would have had a rather resigned view of the tragic nature of the human condition.

We’re born. We’re buffeted by forces beyond our control, beyond our comprehension, and then we die. Often for no reason, leaving profound suffering in its wake.

Given the immensity of the events of the middle of the twentieth century — the Holocaust and the violence of the atomic age — it was quite reasonable that Einstein might be inured to the loss of a single child to whom he had no relation.

Instead, Einstein’s letter was one of profound and philosophic condolence.

“A human being,” he wrote, “is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”

Einstein was expressing one of the few things that physics and philosophers and priests seem to agree on: That everything and everyone is far more connected…