We are one being, linked in profound and essential ways even though we rarely pause to consider them.
The surface of Earth is seventy percent water just as we are made up of seventy percent water. This is the same water that has been on Earth for four and a half billion years. It flows in and out of each one of us. In cycles too infinite to imagine this water has been drawn up in plant cells, swirled in oceans, circulated in bloodstreams, sweated, excreted, wept out tearfully, drunk up thirstily, formed into new life, risen into vapor, and locked into ice. The saliva in your mouth is made of water molecules intimately shared with beings that lived long ago and will be shared with all who come after us.
We breathe about 600 million breaths in a lifetime. The air we rely on is a balance of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, and a dozen or so other gases perfect suited to our existence. It circulates through endless forms and uses, moved by the wind of our planet and by each exhale of living beings — trees, crows, humpback whales, and newborn babies. It recycles just as the calcium in your jawbone may well have been quicklime poured on a criminal’s grave, a garnet on a nobleman’s finger, cheese carried by a nomadic herder, and a tropical ocean’s coral reef.
Nothing in our bodies is separate from what’s around us. We are nourished by what has grown from the sun’s energy and we remake ourselves constantly, replacing millions of cells every second using only materials that have been on this planet for millennia.
Quantum physics tells us the principle of entanglement explains how particles, once linked, can remain connected even when physically separated by vast distances, possibly even by time. Entanglement occurs between living beings as well, both human and animal, indicating a greater connection same call a morphic field and others call a holographic universe.
On this planet we are linked to every particle and every life form so intimately that science is beginning to echo what poets and sages have been saying for thousands of years. We. Are. One.
Each person is truly your kin. Our human connection begins with common ancestors. Genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts estimates that everyone on the planet is at least a 40th cousin. That’s because the family tree expands as each generation traces back. You have eight great-grandparents. Their parents had 16 parents. Go back 40 generations and you’d find a trillion grandparents at a time when there were fewer than 15 million people on the planet. That means we share 40th great-grandparents. In that way you are connected to eighty percent of the people on this planet. That includes the guy driving the delivery truck right outside your window and the woman thousands of miles away seeking water in a drought.
The smallest children seem to recognize that existence is an “alive poem.” They find kinship with rocks, animals, as well as people. Our human family, built on kindness and cooperation, helps one another heroically. We are waking to the ways our Earth sustains us, working harder than ever to restore justice and ecological balance. We are reaching out to share, laugh, explain, and find kinship with one another.
We are entangled in a universe so holographic that we can’t help but sense the oneness that has been there all along.
Thank you, Laura! I so appreciate this lesson of our interconnectedness with all of creation … yesterday, today and tomorrow.
You make a rather complex subject so easy to understand. I love the entanglement and morphic resonance realities. They explain the oneness so accurately. A timely article.
Wonderful article Laura.
This is wonderful, Laura. So glad I happened upon it this evening! Absolutely rings true to my experience. So helpful to see how you articulate what I’ve been able to feel for years. Thanks.
As a lifelong educator, I’ve often marveled at the sense of comfort, familiarity, and seamlessness of the faces of children across time and place. Their undeniable uniqueness is always balanced by the feeling that I’ve seen them before, known them before. When we sing or dance together, this fluidity is magnified. Thank you for such an affirmation of possibility, the possibility of peace.