World Views

I’ve been having a recurring thought, dream or vision. I see inside my body, and the millions of organisms that make it work – starting with the gross: skin, muscle, tissue, bones, organs, etc., and then getting smaller and smaller, to the millions of cells that make up all of these organs and together make up my blood – each of these with a nucleus doing specific work to create the whole of what is me. And then I see myself in my life – my very small life that touches just an infinitesimal fraction of the population of the world – doing my daily work. And my vision gets broader and pulls away, seeing myself smaller and smaller, moving back from my life, my town, my state, my country, and then moving farther away from the earth itself, until I see the earth from space – a small ball of green, blue and white. And I am aware that on this planet, are trillions of people like myself, each with a nucleus, going about their lives. But they are invisible, from space, just like my individual cells are invisible to me. But together, they make up the whole of what we call “the world.”

From this vantage point, all that seemed and still seems so achingly important in the micro version of life seems irrelevant. Whether someone cuts me off when the light turns green; whether we put the addition on the house; whether my ex-husband brings our daughter back on time or agrees to my suggestion for a summer schedule; seems insignificant. We are all part of one organic whole. Before our lives began, and after they end, this “whole” will go on. Just as in my body, there were cells that battled the flu last month. Those cells have died, and new cells have taken their place, and my body goes on. It is interesting to look at the daily trials and tribulations of my life – of any life – from this perspective.

The ocean is full of beans this morning – crashing and foaming and frothing. It seems to have rained last night. Earlier in the evening, the wind was doing a whirling dervish kind of dance. I was reading in my room and at about 5PM, I realized that the electricity in our palapa wasn’t working. I assumed that the wind had affected all of Maya Tulum; when it go too dark to read, I dozed off and awoke in the dark just in time for dinner. I mentally patted myself on the back for packing a flashlight, and left for the dining hall. I was so surprised to see that other palapas had light, and that it was just my palapa that had none. Of course, the front desk was able to have someone fix it right away. But I laughed all night about how I was in the dark for so many hours, assuming we were all in this together. Could there be a metaphor here?