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?