Heartbeat

Have you ever considered a heartbeat? It's that most basic sign of life that we have- more important even than breathing. It's the beating of our hearts that ensures us that we are indeed here, not dreaming some impossible dream, that we are not some figment of our own imagination. I think that's why I'm so drawn to them. When I'm scared or rushing around I don't have to try to hear it- I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins and it feels good to know that everything is fine.
We crave finding that in ourselves and others. It's so easy to loose that connection and start to wonder if the people around us are really there or if we are the only person alive in the universe, and even though we know that we aren't, and our minds tell us that there are 6 billion people on this planet and 20 something that you can see right now, even so we still doubt it. If you can find someone else's heartbeat it's like their pulse is your only connection to another living thing- and it feels good. It's all about contact, interacting with another person.
I heard once that Americans need the most personal space of anyone in the world. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. The idea of touch is lost to Americans. We just don't understand it. As much as we want human contact, we fear it.
Something as simple as running into someone in the hallway makes us panic- as if the touch could be deadly. I think we get shocked by the collision of our respective universes- the idea that someone else could exist on their own completely apart from ourselves- that even people we don't know can make contact with us that easily.
It begs the question: what are we so afraid of. Why does the idea of genuine contact with anther human being terrify us? We're not the only culture that has been lied to about human connection, so why are we the ones that are terrified?

What's different about us?

But more importantly:

How do we fix it?