Hello,
This is an essay written by Maggie Stevens entitled,
You Are Here.
When I was young,
I remember looking out the window of our station wagon,
All my sisters having drifted to sleep long before.
Look,
I exclaimed to my parents,
The moon,
She's following me.
While it is developmentally appropriate for a child to believe that the sun and moon follow her,
It is also an ego function that is difficult to outgrow.
How often do we believe that someone said a harsh word designed specifically to hurt us?
We know that driver cut us off just to be mean,
Or that social media meme was directed to upset us.
We may believe that our neighbors,
Local leaders,
National government are acting against our interests in order to thwart us.
We put ourselves at the center of every action,
Forgetting that others act in their own self-interest,
Not necessarily against ours.
This egocentric focus is deeply ingrained in us.
As Alice Roosevelt Longworth quipped about her father,
President Theodore Roosevelt,
My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral,
The bride at every wedding,
And the baby at every christening.
We too want the world to revolve around us.
At one time,
We humans believed that the earth was the center of the solar system.
Wrong.
We believed that our sun was the center of the galaxy.
Wrong again.
And if you didn't already know,
I'm sorry to inform you that the Milky Way galaxy isn't even a particularly unique galaxy,
And certainly not at the center of the universe.
The writer Mark Twain was well aware of our species' penchant for our own exceptionalism,
And poked fun at it in his book Captain Stormfield Visit to Heaven.
As Captain Stormfield is trying to explain to the Clerks of Heaven that he is from the Earth,
They check their maps and share with him that there are billions of stars with planets.
Finally,
One clerk shares,
Oh,
I know the one he means now,
Sir.
It is on the map.
It's called the Wort.
Just one small rocky planet circling a rather nondescript star.
It is the same way.
Each of us are one human being living out a life in a specific place and time,
Just like billions of other human beings.
No more.
No less.
This idea,
However,
Does not diminish who we are.
While there are billions of humans on the planet,
Each one of us is unique.
We have been born into a specific family and place with our own traits and gifts.
Our challenge is to bloom where we are planted and to share our gifts with those around us.
We aren't the center of the wheel.
We're more like a connection on a web.
The good we do can strengthen us and the entire community.
From the microcosm of our own lives to the macrocosm of the universe,
Carl Sagan reminded us,
The cosmos is within us.
We are made of star stuff.
We are a way for the universe to know itself.
I appreciate that you took the time to listen.
If you like,
You can follow me on Insight Timer.
Then you'll be notified when I post additional meditations and talks.
You can also check out my blog at www.
Metamettamindfulness.
Com.
Thanks again for listening.
