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Esteemed Reader of our Magazine:

I felt like a blood cell traversing an artery. People of all shapes, colors, and manners-of-being rushed or strolled past, before, behind, and alongside me as I strolled the corridors of yet another airport. We were all headed to our gate, or the exit, or performing tasks within the bustling port.

I found myself looking at each person with particular fixation of interest. One person's shoes caught my attention: hers had extraordinarily large soles. Before my mind could play too long with this word, I noticed another, an Indian man in a suit, sitting at a gate, working at a strikingly thin, light-weight laptop. For a moment I was envious, until my attention was captured by a faux-blonde in a tight white T-shirt with too-well-formed breasts. "Those must be doctored," I heard in my mind… And when a young man of apparently Middle Eastern descent passed, I paused to consider his safety or his concern for such, in the face of the suspicion which must meet him at every turn…

And then my mind did a funny thing. It turned inside out and I began to observe its contents. In that moment my thoughts quieted, as though suddenly self-conscious at having been observed in their ever-mutable silliness. And a new thought arose. A question: "Is there another mode of seeing, a different way of looking which is, perhaps, more objective; which involves more than just my random associations; which involves my whole being?"

With this in mind I began to sense my body, to watch my mind and feelings, and from this disposition to apprehend the beings around me. I remembered a statement made by a friend who had met a Tibetan lama of high standing. Describing the encounter he said "I had the distinct impression that he took me in the palm of his hand and weighed me." So as I looked again at those around me, not through any ideistic standard, but opposite the counterweight of my own being.
"Man is the measure the world."

As I remembered this utterance of Protagoras, I gazed out and thought/felt/sensed the people in the airport. Many seemed flighty, inwardly disheveled. I observed that they fidgeted or jerkily turned the pages of newspapers. Or they had a blank, impassive expressions as though occupied with fantasy or daydream or were otherwise absent. They seemed not only not to be "weighty" but even completely unaware of their own existence. And then there were those-mostly from some obviously foreign culture-who seemed "heavier" more grounded, present, self-contained, and directed. I even observed one man, a Native American in the Albuquerque airport, pause and pray over a sandwich. He was like a point of stillness in the storm. He looked up as I walked past and there was definitely a brightness in his eyes.
For as long as I can remember I've been convinced that human beings have a task to accomplish in the course of our lives; that our time here constitutes time spent in an arena in which something is to be developed. And as I traveled and looked around these airports I began to see levels to which people were fulfilling this task. For though there are many things to do, many roles to play on this stage of our lives, there is a fundamental duty. It is to be cognizant of ourselves. In developing this capacity we build something. Our being accrues substantiality that makes us weightier, less reactive. It is the development of "character" but also something more.

"Call the world, if you please, 'the vale of soul making'," John Keats proclaimed. Which suggests that we are not born with a ready-made soul. It suggests that part of our duty here involves the making of a soul. Could it be that the act of re-collecting ourselves accrues material in our person which crystallizes and forms itself into a body within a body? This I don't know, nor do I have a means for immediately answering the question.

Really the only way to find out if this proposition is true is to test it. To deny outright that such a duty exists without investigation is to potentially abrogate a real responsibility. So too is to accept the idea-without investigation; though it may be that the investigation itself is the responsibility's fulfillment. But such an investigation would need to involve an effort of the whole being-an inquiry that encompasses thought, feeling and bodily action in tandem.

What I do know is that there is another way of "judging" our fellow humans, and ourselves. It is a way that doesn't actually involve any judgement. It is a direct perception-an apperception-that takes into account the whole of a person. It recognizes that we are each comprised of thoughts, feelings sensations-an inner life-in addition to how we appear on the surface.

This way of seeing also recognizes that we represent varying degrees of substance-the stuff of the soul. We are more or less "collected." More or less strong-not muscularly but in our ability to remain self-cognizant. Through this effort we can begin to know how much of us is true and how much is a lie. And in seeing this we can begin to underscore what is true.

—Jason Stern