We are All Connected

The older I am, the more I see how interconnected everything is.  Today I'm not talking about the deeper way we are connected, or the illusion of separateness that has ensnared us, but the simple external web of connection that links us all together.  For example, someone cuts in on someone else in traffic. The 'someone else' needs to get to his destination on time, otherwise an important appointment will be missed. Now he is stuck behind a lorry instead. He is late to the appointment, which is to meet the manager of a nursing home to see if the home will take his elderly mother. A third party gets in first, instead, and the only remaining place is lost. The elderly mother's entire future has changed because of some stranger's impatience on the roads. The son drives home in misery, and doesn't notice a car pulling out of a side street. They just miss each other, but the driver of the said car is now so enraged that she overtakes and cuts in on other drivers for the next five minutes. One of those drivers jams on the brakes and is rear-ended by somebody else, and the traffic comes to a standstill.  One of the people held up behind those two cars is now going to be late for an important appointment...
 

Once you started seeing things this way, it is amazing how interdependent we all are. And I am only thinking about the human level today, but of course this truth is woven through all living things.   There is a brilliant film called 'Crash' which captures this extremely well; it is a harrowing but sobering tale, following the lives of a number of seemingly unrelated people and their monumental effect on each other's lives through brief moments of forgetfulness, or impatience, or rage.

The point of realising this is not to become paralysed by inaction or terrified of making choices. The point is to remember this when you are tempted to lose it, or when you are momentarily blinded by your emotional pain. To 'not react' is profound, and underpins many ancient teachings. It doesn't mean 'suppression' of your feelings; on the contrary, it means fully looking at your feelings, acknowledging them, and 'feeling' them. But not acting on them. At least, not until the first flare of the furnace has died down and you can see through the red.

'Not reacting', but waiting before responding with calm intention, has far-reaching implications, not least of which must be severing the chain of reaction that passes from person to person, and which can result in pain, or even catastrophe - however far down the line.

Not reacting is something I find very hard, being somewhat of a slave to my feelings. It's to do with being 'present', feeling your breath and becoming aware, and stepping to the side of your thoughts. It's unlikely you'll manage this in a crisis until you've practised many times in neutral or only mildly irritating situations. I'm going to keep practising, because slowly, slowly, I can tell the inner muscle is strengthening, and who knows what suffering - my own or others' - I might alleviate, by doing so?  I can't quite manage it in the heat of the moment yet but I'm hopeful one day I'll be able to.

I have to include this great little circular that recently arrived in my email inbox, because it encapsulates the truth so well, although in this case it examines it from a slightly different angle: the automatic reaction of 'not wanting to get involved':

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. What food might this contain? the mouse wondered...he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap. Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house! The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, 'Mr Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.' The mouse turned to the pig and told him, 'There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!' The pig sympathised, but said, 'I am so very sorry, Mr Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.' The mouse turned to the cow and said, 'There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!' The cow said, 'Wow, Mr Mouse, I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose.' So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap...alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever. Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. Each of us is a vital thread in another person's tapestry: our lives are woven together for a reason.