There's a saying "You can be anything you want in life, except everything." This has been the hardest lesson for me as an adult. Accepting that there is a limit to what I can experience - what I can learn - in this one life I have to lead. To me, the limit of mortality isn't that our lives are finite, but that they are singular.
But.
This weight is lifted when we realize that in our interactions with others, by opening our experiences and our thinking up to those we encounter, we live a thousand lives and can learn from the lessons of each one. Perhaps this is the current that drives us to connect, to know the stories of our fellow humans. This is certainly at the heart of our investment in education - the heredity of learning - where we serve in a very special spot.
We as teachers get to stand in the confluence of the oceans of knowledge of the past and of the ingenuity of the future. We get to feel the currents shift as the two collide and in our best moments, influence the tides.
"What is an ocean, but a multitude of drops." from Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell