As I was getting ready for work today, I noticed the waves of nearly effervescent green in the Spring leaves outside my window. A slight breeze was making a flutter through them and as I looked beyond the specific tree I was observing, the whole world seems to be moving in a graceful little dance.
Its beauty grabbed my attention which then drifted to the notion that there are so many dimensions in which our existence is alive — always growing, dying, and starting again. Over and over and over, throughout all time. It made me think about where I fit into this broad and deep dynamic of living things, all co-existing to one degree or another.
I thought about how adaptable things are, especially humans. We conform to our surroundings, especially over time. And we, because of that very adaptability, also become quite conditioned by them. This certainly happens to us physically. We build all kinds of things to help us manage that. And, then, we become dependent on those things. And the stasis we subconsciously are seeking (and, to some extent, achieving) affects how we view things, all the way from the basic dependencies we inadvertently foster up through the disposition we develop about what our lives should be about.
There seems to be be great flexibility in this dynamic. But, we also are becoming more aware of some of the ways that elasticity is not infinite. The slow slide of use to ever-increasing consumption, even just for the sake of doing so sometimes, is (has been) having some consequences. Collectively, we are more aware of some of those than ever. Environmental, social, financial, spiritual impacts abound, not to mention mental, emotional, and psychological ones in which we are now seeing all kinds of cracks.
It is becoming increasingly obvious how inter-related everything is. There really are no isolated or independent parts. Everything we do impacts something else. We can even appear a bit irritated by that simple reality, as if we're somehow owed our mutual independence. But, by design, nothing was created that way. And, despite our attempts to force the issue, it simply can't be done. In the end, our individual 'rights' never supersede our collective needs. And, just because we can create (and perpetuate) the illusion that we operating independently (minding our own business), the whole world is impacted by our choices in aggregate. My survival is, actually, subordinate to our survival. ...as is my prosperity.
The glimpses I have this particularly beautiful morning offer a kind of peace that nothing is inanimate — everything is alive, in its own way.
And while this dream-state is disrupted by on-going news of events where this peace is being destroyed in other parts of our global existence, I am startled by the severity of both and the reality that I need to live consciously in ways that reinforce the collective good, especially where that is not happening.
