If there exists anything like an international language, that language is not love, but misery. Suffering is the common denominator among all peoples, a condition that visits everyone regardless of age, race, nationality, socioeconomic status, or the multitude of other factors that divide and stratify us. And, yet, there’s a fundamental flaw in my metaphor, because though we are all bound in the universal brother-/sister-hood of misery, the pain we find in others is as likely to render them inscrutable as to bring us into fraternity. More and more, we live our lives in isolation, resenting the faces we pass on the street because we can’t find anything in their unhappiness that mirrors our own.