Acts 4:32
32. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
The earth is full of complexity and variety, of myriads and multitudes of human beings. Different languages, habits, skin colors, body shapes, talents, experiences, understandings, possessions, relationships, creeds, and perspectives have we. And, yet, we are all bound together by our common humanity -- by being human. As far as we know, none of us asked to become alive and all of us certainly, we know, will die. We have the same basic requirements for survival -- and the same essential needs for joy. To love and to be loved is commonly held to be the common goal of humankind's common quest for happiness, though there always will be some who deny it or ignore it. That is something else that makes us human beings more alike than unalike: we can be wrong.
What we undoubtedly hold in common -- life, death, and the needed sustenance found in our shared habitat, that is, presently, Earth -- should draw us together in sympathy. We should remember that none of us invented the universe or ourselves. No matter what our tastes, opinions, or choices, the fact that we are human beings -- and, as such, subject to life and death -- is not a product of our wills. We cannot take credit for our existence. Nor for existence itself. And we cannot even take credit for our survival because every one of us is dependent on others.
Some might try to say that this is not true of themselves, for they live in the wild, surviving only on what they find there. And for those survivalists who live out there naked with no matches and no iron or steel this is true -- in the present moment. But, in the beginning, that wild individualist was formed in a woman's womb and, as an infant, needed to suckle and be warmed in order to live, and, even if grown to be feral as a youngster, will have learned survival techniques from some creature, be that creature wolf or human. None of us is truly independent. We all need. And we all need others.
And yet we claim and hog and distance and push away to satisfy our own needs at the expense of others whose survival is in jeopardy. "Finders keepers, losers weepers." "Looking out for number one" and mantras like that. All of us are capable of becoming little despots with decadent amounts of survival requirements and the delusionary pride that for this reason we are here. And then, we die, like all the rest, and our rotting human flesh returns to the soil matter of the earth. How clever of us to have lived longer than some. How clever of us to have ensured that our decomposing organisms will be sealed in tombs, away from the other dirt for at least a millennium or two.
Ah, the littleness of our minds -- another thing we have in common with one another. That person you dismiss, your neighbor, your enemy, the one who did you wrong, the one you pity, the one you find disgusting, or the one you overlook, is as human as you are: was born, will die, needs. You share this earth with that person. You come from the same source. You both have pain and suffering, hope and delight, sorrow and fears... sorrowing over, fearing and suffering similar things. Like loss... despair... futility. We could acknowledge this and remember it and be kind to one another. We could comfort and console. We could hold each other up when we falter and laugh together when we joy. We could, in empathetically relating to others who are so different than us and, yet, so essentially the same, learn to truly love and to be loved. We could make our finite lives about the infinite truth of our existence. To put it poetically, and no less truly, we are poured forth here upon this spinning sphere to mingle and flow, to pool together our essences in everlasting wonder and awe.
Your life is not your possession. You are part of me as I am part of you. Only the truly brave -- those brave enough to, say, take a leap of faith -- can admit this truth and face the reality of life and death in the union of hearts and souls as they truly are: united, as Albert Einstein once said, "in a bond of sympathy."
Christina Chase
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