We spend most of our lives emphasizing differences. We sort ourselves by opinion, by taste, by the neighborhoods we live in and the work we do. From inside these categories, the distance between one person and another can seem enormous.

But Camus points to the layer underneath the sorting. Beneath every difference is a shared reality that no one escapes. Everyone knows the sea, even if only in imagination. Everyone has stood in the rain. Everyone has felt desire pull them toward something and necessity pull them away. Everyone, without exception, is struggling with the fact that they will die.

This is not a grim observation. It is, in a strange way, one of the most comforting things a person can hear. You are not alone in any of the fundamental experiences of your life. The fear you carry, someone else carries too. The longing you feel, someone across the world feels at this very moment. The awareness of death that keeps you up some nights is the same awareness that has kept humans up since the beginning.

To become fully aware is to see this shared ground. And seeing it, to feel less alone.

See also: The Strangeness We Share | A Faint Flutter of Wings | Existentialism vs. absurdism