Home.

Home after being flung halfway around the world.

It seems as though you can't handle the fact that people exist independently of you, that other people are not doing exactly what you're doing right now.

. . . is what a friend said to me on the phone in the middle of the night. It's such a typical conversation for us to have, about exactly what we've always discussed, and even the way we hung up the phone (two and a half hours later) was predictable. Also the way he mentioned the predictability of everything, and the way that I felt the slightest hint of nostalgia before I heard the line go silent.

The same with my house, my street, my family -- though my brother is taller, tanner, better at piano than I remember. Everything is achingly, preciously how I imagined it would be.

You drive along the same highway and take the same exit for half your life, and everything on the way home (the bookstores, the restaurants, the gas stations and trees and lampposts) all start to mean something extremely important. The people, too, the ones fate has thrown you together with -- they all matter, they all mean everything you know about your life.

The economist's nightmare: endowment effect -- the over-attribution of value to something with only typical worth. Everything about coming home shows that we are all victims of it, and maybe someone rational is cringing somewhere at the thought of such a blunder.

But maybe the entirety of existence is just one endowment effect. After all, I was endowed with this subjective experience. Which brings me back to the quote above: How could I ever be okay with other people living their lives when I know that my life is just another moment happening among millions of moments right now, that my home is no more special than anyone else's? My friend was exasperated with me, but I maintain that it's a question worth fretting over.