While We're Here

A thought-provoking reflection on finding our way through an imperfect world

We all seek to belong in this world—to fit in with our family, friends, and wider communities. Many of us assume that we achieve this by sharing similar traits or beliefs with others. While We’re Here shows how belonging means to embrace not only our commonalities, interests, and delights but also our worries, doubts, and disagreements. It requires us to contemplate and interpret ourselves, our place in the world, and what we want to preserve or change. This book charts a path through this lifelong process.

Avram Alpert explains what belonging means and demonstrates how we can achieve it through personal and collective action. He explores how humans belong in a universe whose ultimate bounds are unknowable and reflects on why the act of writing is a necessary part of our search to understand belonging. Drawing on diverse ideas from philosophy, religion, psychology, politics, and personal experience, Alpert challenges us to think deeply about the complexities of belonging and to consider it an inherent, crucial aspect of human existence.

Offering a broader, more realistic conception of what it means to belong, While We’re Here enables readers to lead fuller, more enriching lives by coming to terms with the mistakes, mishaps, and moments of joy that give meaning to the brief time we share on this earth.