Some say we are all one.
Buddhist philosophy, among others, instructs us that we are indeed each other, and that an action on one side of the world affects another on the exact opposite continent. What we do matters because we all matter, because we ARE matter, pure and simple; that we each contain original atoms, molecules and other “stuff” from the initial explosive beginning of Time …here a Mozart , there a Mozart, everywhere, a Mozart.
We are all stardust, whether we like it or not.
If this idea contains even a morsel of truth, then why, why, why, do we fight? Why are we in constant struggle to WIN over each other? How is that we exist in this odd instant belief, this certain “knowledge” that there is an “Us” and a “Them”? Why do we refuse to admit we know more than our limited minds allow us to know? Who are we really fighting against, and for crying out loud, what on Earth or in the Cosmos do we get from insisting on remaining unknown to each other?
Why do we always feel as if we are constantly roaming around like strangers in a very cold, strange land?
What good do we derive from that state of alienation?
It’s almost as if each of us comes from another distinct and individual planet.
We are all aliens to each other.
It’s much more comforting, isn’t it, to think of ourselves – our little, isolated, seeking selves – as part of some Family of the Universe, with plenty of places around the Cosmic Table for everyone and everything to have a seat at a large Thanksgiving dinner. Some Momma or Other is cooking up all sorts of delicious and nourishing dishes of which there is a never-ending supply. Our House always smells like a Holiday.
At least it should.
Instead, it smells of gun smoke, fire and the ever present stink of evil brimstone.
If we are a Family, we need counseling….an intervention….help…a remedy. (Some think we need a stern Father…not me.)
SO, we spend hours on a therapist couch, ingest every manner of pill, food and liquor to ease our troubled souls, and run off to the country when our cities get too hot and crowded…..we subjugate others, …that is when we are not too busy avoiding each other.
I can only arrive at this idea: we are strangers to each other because we are actually strangers to ourselves.
Just when we think we have it all figured out, that we know where we belong, that we are certain we are on the right path for our life, something keeps us from a genuinely knowledge…that little corner of the sardine can that a once popular British comedy troupe did an entire routine around….a corner we cannot get to, and so we are never fully enough emptied of our concrete notions, making being filled up with new knowledge impossible…..so, we keep digging. We are still hungry for what is lodged in that inconvenient little corner…..or at least we experience it as inconvenient because it is so hard to reach.
What I learn , as i age, is that it is that continued effort, that search for the last little bite of sardine, that keeps us alive enough to want to create…why?
Because we are actually infinite, and there is never an end to what we have to yet learn about ourselves.
Because there is ALWAYS more to learn.
And in that, we are indeed all exactly the same.
An odd dance of opposites , an Olympic routine of “yes I know it all” fighting against the tension of “Shit, I know nothing!”
That’s what makes each discovery so damned fun…….such a relief.
If we don’t expire from frustration along the way.