The minute we get out of bed in the morning, we are in relationship to the world around us. A friend once told me that when the first astronauts looked back at our fragile and beautiful planet they realized that it was a living entity in space. So when we get up, we are already in relationship with the planet around us.
How do we feel about the many relationships in our lives?
When we get up in the morning, do we feel upset about life, depressed, and afraid? Often when we feel those emotions it is because we feel isolated from the world around us. We feel that we are alone.
I think that American Indigenous tribes stressed the relationship to the world around us, but in modern culture we have placed humans at the top of the evolution of the species and consider all other species and nature inferior to us.
This image gives us a particular relationship to the world around us which denies to us a respectful and caring connection to the other living beings.
Can we make change?
There is some effort being made to change the disproportionate image we have of ourselves and our place in the world, but the progress is slow.
It seems that technology has made us so impressed with ourselves that we are blinded to the isolation we are creating. I just read in the paper that the 383 billionaires of this planet own 45 percent of the wealth of the planet* and that the wealthiest is one of the Information Age experts.
Technology has impressed us so much that we are willing to sacrifice fair economic relationships with each other.**
*This was written in the early 2000s; today there are approximately 3,000 billionaires. Of those, 81 billionaires have more wealth than 50% of the world combined.
**This continues to be true, over 30 years later from the time of this article’s publication. Elon Musk is projected to become the world’s first trillionaire.
What will make us change and look at the chaos we are creating around us in our relationships with nature and with each other? Will it be illness in our lives, a local natural disaster, a war?
What makes human beings really question the world around them?
In my life, I have met very few people who really take time to examine their relationship to the world. In fact, I would say that many people do not even realize that they have a relationship to nature or to the society as a whole. Many feel that nature and society are there to meet their needs.
Looking at our youth today, we can see that many of them do not feel a strong connection to the world around them.
They are not aware that the air they breathe and the animals, birds, and the people around them are part of one movement, the movement of life, and that they are part of that movement, not isolated from it. Every action that they take affects the whole.
Are we interested in making them aware of their relationship to the whole or is it easier to go on with our lives paying attention only to our own particular needs?
In no other time in history have we been faced with such monumental problems as wars, worldwide hunger, exploding population. What is at the root of all these disasters? Is it our relationship to the whole? If so, what prevents us from having good and flourishing relationships with the world of nature and with each other?
