ON THE INDIVIDUAL'S RELATION TO THE WHOLE

if universal change happens by way of internal revolution in each individual who makes up this universe, then it would follow that universal regression happens by way of fearful backtracking within each individual. if the world is to be changed for the better, each of us will have to let go of our fears not by dismissing them, but by looking them face-to-face and using the understanding of what they are to fight them and to strengthen our ardency in those areas in which we have no fear. imagine what could be if each of us embraced absolute honesty and compassion, and created something every time we felt inspired to do so? what if there were no schedules to keep us from leaving classrooms and lying on the grass every time we felt the need to breath in some sunlight? we created things like schedules in order to maximize our cultural freedom by working together to accomplish shared goals. instead, our shared goals have become contorted, and although this perhaps makes us realize our individual goals with more intensity due to the obviousness of human desires for freedom, we forget the simple fact that individual life-cycles are the same as global life-cycles, just broken down in to smaller, more easily-examined segments. our individual goals are held back by the hours of work, but perhaps this is a good thing because it forces us to realize the importance of those things that are our own (and thus everybody's) that exist beyond the arena of scheduling: art, and conversation, and vision, and dancing. every interaction that an individual has with any one thing is an interaction with the entire world, because the way one interacts with one thing will affect the way that thing interacts with other things, even those things that the individual first mentioned will never ever see or know or witness. in this way, we are far more connected than we realize, and if we are able to let go as individuals of the need to witness first-hand exactly how and in what ways we are able to affect the world, then we will be able to focus that energy into our crafts and our words and our love and our selves, instead of into the act of grasping for footholds on cliffs that have none, because they are ever-changing. a foothold that exists one day will not exist the next, due to our own influence on everything and the subsequent influence that everything else has on each other thing. each of us creates the reality of our world, and sometimes we forget that. perhaps each person in the world and each being in the world is like one tiny cell in a larger organism, except the difference is that each of us cells is conscious and soulful, and thus the larger organism is conscious and soulful and as complex as the product of every mind and spirit in the world multiplied by every other mind and spirit in the world, and then put through a giant machine of circumstance and storm and seasons to render a result that changes as soon as it is manifested. the very act of something being created changes everything that came before, and changes the creators. just as that which is examined is necessarily changed due to its being examined, everything truth or thought that is spoken is, by nature, transformed upon its becoming a part of the world. people do not necessarily speak things in order to help others think about things that they have never cognized. instead, people, in speaking things to others, only make others reexamine or put into new words or recognize something that is already somewhere within their soul or psyche, and similarly the person who is spoken to may change the speaker's notion of that specific thought because his association with it and his idea of it is different than the speakers, and may come from the opposite direction of a line of reasoning, yet end up in the exact same place. and yet this place, too, is transient and is no longer the same place once the thought is spoken and heard. all of our thoughts and ideas are like some large swelling ocean whose shore is constantly being altered by the rearrangement of stones and sand and the decomposition of stones into sand (things broken down into parts) and the re-forming of stones over a much, much longer period of time. our sea is simultaneously boiling and freezing over, and for good or for bad it is as alive as it has ever been, because no individual can help but be a part of every other individual no matter how hard he tries to be insular. we are constantly and accidentally and purposefully reshaping one-another's minds and hearts, and in this way our selves and our beings are fluid and absolutely connected to one-another. each of us is one note on a violin string in a neverending symphony, and even if some notes are more noticeable than others, the symphony itself would not be the same with any one note missing, and the importance of every other note is affected or diminished or heightened when any one note is lacking. it is obvious, but it is important.

(October 2007)