Living Together
Gosh there’s a lot of uncertainty out in the world. I get the New York Times “The Morning” Newsletter delivered to my work inbox every morning, and today I focused on how I felt while reading it. Even being largely apathetic, I could still feel a rise in tension, a slight constriction in my chest as I skimmed through the news. Catherine Price urges a focus on what’s controllable. I certainly can’t control the rhetoric, the half-baked policy announcements, or politicians’ behaviors. (It’s almost as if I shouldn’t subscribe to that newsletter.)
I can control my consumption, as hard as it may seem. And the thing is, people will tell you anything that’s truly newsworthy. The news purports to bring critical, impactful information. But I only experience consequences in my mental wellbeing. Instead of reacting to bumbling political leadership, I choose to contribute on my own terms, by providing my own vision for our one world. Let me expound.
We live on a beautiful planet full of wonder. We share this planet. We also share the consequences of our actions together. There is no second home for us to go to.
We all want the same things, health, love and time. Our similarities far outweigh our differences. On the grand scale of time and space of the universe, this is an absolute miracle. It’s a miracle we are here together, sharing this existence, at this exact point in time, on this one small planet in the vast cosmos. Recognizing we occupy this singular point of time and space together, we can choose: how will we live? We each hold the power of agency, immutable by anyone or anything else in the universe. How will we choose to shape the fabric of spacetime? How will we live?
It’s kind of like living with dogs. You hopefully enjoy 12 years with your dog. You try to give them a good life, and you make the most of your time together. But you also know they don’t live as long (as us), and you only have so long with them. You don’t focus on that, you just enjoy the time. But you understand it. It’s the same for all of us here on this planet, the timescale is just different. We’re only here together for 70 or 80 years, give or take. We have some overlap with the previous and next generations, but basically we all have a century or so together to live and love and laugh and dance.
How will we live?