We're in This Together

You and I, for some reason, have ended up spending much of our time together on this planet.  Perhaps we've never met in a physical way, but we do share a connection, if in no other way than through the words on this site or on Living Life Fully.  It boggles the mind to think that of all the people who have ever lived on this planet, we've ended up being right here, right now, and having some sort of connection to each other.  And there are some seven billion other people sharing this planet with us right now, also.  And I think we'd be amazed to find out how much we have in common with so many of those people.

Just looking at the computer that I'm using right now, I see that it's made in China.  Of course that means that a couple of years ago, someone went to work in China and worked on putting together this exact computer that I have now--and it's surely the result of the work of several people in the same factory, each putting in their own pieces on an assembly line.  And not only that, but the different pieces that make up the computer--the screen, the processor, the battery, the hard drive, etc.--came from a completely different place and were put together by completely different people.  And all of those things were made from different raw materials that were mined or produced in different places.  I could probably trace the elements of this computer to hundreds, if not thousands of people who worked on it or who provided materials used in it, all over the world.

And we all breathe the same oxygen, and drink the same water--without either one of them, we would die very quickly.  We eat foods prepared in different ways, but that originate in similar ways.  When I go to a restaurant, I'm connected to my server and the cook and the host or hostess for a short while, but also to the farms that provided the chicken, the potatoes, the vegetables.  Someone made the bread or rolls that I eat, and the wine had to come from somewhere, and is the result of the work of many different people at many different stages.  We are simply part of a greater whole, and so is everyone else.

And so is everyone else!  All these people around us every day are here on this planet with us, at the same time as us.  What does this mean?  For one thing, if we can keep in mind that we're all sharing this planet for a very short period of time, it may be easier for us to see everyone else as "fellow passengers to the grave," as Dickens referred to us all, rather than strangers who may or may not be nice to us.  We're all experiencing what it means to be human beings at the same time, often in the same places.  If we can truly understand this connection, it may make it easier for us to treat those other people kindly, with decency and respect, and not let them hurt our feelings with their mistakes or their indifference.  We're all learning lessons about life as we go, and not everyone learns as quickly as everyone else.  Perhaps that person who just was rude to you is acting out insecurities in the only ways they've been taught to do so, no matter how inappropriate or harmful those ways are.

Life is a challenge.  It offers many difficult moments along with the moments of joy and even ecstasy.  How we meet those challenges is up to us, and how we treat other people as they deal with their own challenges is also up to us.  If we can remember, though, that we're all learning and growing and that almost no one has reached any sort of peak or pinnacle of growth, we can be more kind and compassionate as we witness others make mistakes that often affect us.  We're all here doing the best we can, and those other people in your life may really need a smile and a greeting this morning, even if they regularly ignore us when we walk by.  How we act and how we treat others is up to us, after all, and shouldn't be a result of how others treat us.  Just because others treat us rudely doesn't give us the right to pass that rudeness on to someone else who hasn't treated us rudely at all.

We're in this together.  Do we want to be that small portion of glue that holds things together, or do we want to contribute to the separation of the world?  Everyone can use a kind word or two each day, and who's to give those words to them, if not us?

Nothing's Perfect

I've just finished putting in windows on our porch.  It was a rather pricey thing to do, but we faced a pretty interesting decision:  put in new windows and be able to actually use the porch, or leave in the (very) old windows and have a porch that was very uninviting and that heated up far too much in the summer for us even to consider spending time out there.  We decided to spend the money, and we now have a three-season porch that we actually like to spend time on.

But the decision to spend the money is only a small part of the process of putting in new windows.  Because we're not wealthy, a job like this falls to me to do, so I end up pulling out the old windows, frames, sills, and all, and putting in the new windows and then framing them.  That's where the time-consuming part comes in, and that's where I have to make decisions as to just how perfect things need to be, as people will be looking at this part of the work more than anything else.

And there's a part of me that wants everything to be perfect, that wants every cut to be precise, every fitting almost unnoticeable.  Part of that, I'm sure, is the fear of being judged by others when they see something I've done that isn't perfect, and that's not a motivating factor that I want to be dominant in my life.  If I want to do something perfectly, then I want to do so simply for the satisfaction of having done so, not to please others.  Besides, if I want perfect, then I need to buy many more expensive tools than those I have, things like a table saw with which I can make precise cuts and fit every board absolutely perfectly.  I really don't want to spend that much money, though.

So I'm pretty satisfied with a very good job rather than a perfect job.  The windows look nice, and so does the framing.  If a professional were to come in and look for so-called flaws, they probably would find quite a few.  But the fact is that the windows are in securely, the framing around them looks very nice, and their installation has improved the porch immensely, turning it into a place where we can spend a lot of time this summer, whereas before, with the old windows, it wasn't a very pleasant place at all.  We now have an attractive three-season porch where we're going to pass many pleasant hours, reading and listening to the many birds in our neighborhood as they sing each morning.

I do know people, though, who would look only at the flaws, who would look only at what they think should have been done better, places where boards should have matched up better or where there shouldn't be quite so much of a gap.  To me, those things are completely unimportant, and I'm happy to have a useful porch now.  I think it would be difficult to go through life always focusing on flaws, always trying to find things wrong with other people's work.  I grew up always looking for flaws in my own work, so now that I'm able to relax and enjoy a nice porch even with its imperfections, life is quite a bit more pleasant.

I hope that I'm always able to be satisfied with a very good job.  Nothing needs to be absolutely perfect.  I don't use this attitude to justify shoddy work that results in inferior results, but I do want to be happy with very good work that makes the most of limited resources and produces a very good job.  The best that we can do is just that--the best that we can do, and we should be happy with that, and not have unrealistic expectations of perfection that are almost always unjustified.