It All Comes Down To This

Thanks for reading this post. I really do appreciate it, but would it change anything you’re doing right now if I reminded you that this moment is the culmination of every single thing you have ever done in your life? Every decision you have ever made, every task you have ever completed, every fight you’ve ever had and every loving gesture you have ever made has brought you right here, right now.

If you drill down on this a little more, what you are doing at this moment is also the culmination of every struggle and triumph your ancestors experienced from the dawn of time. They lived, fought, struggled, loved and died so you could read this blog post. For better or worse, what they did shaped who we are and how we live our lives. We can ignore the connections to our ancestors, but we cannot deny them. We can be angry at our ancestors for the way we turned out, yet here we are. They got us here and now we are the only ones with the power to change the present. Take a second and imagine how lucky you are that you are even here in the first place. Do we squander their lives out of our own anger and dissatisfaction, or do we honor them and thank them for giving us the opportunity to improve on the work they did?

As if that way of thinking hasn’t annoyed you enough, what about the people who grew your food, built your roads and stitched your clothes? These are connections we cannot exist without. What do we owe the people we have chosen to be connected to simply by relying on the fruits of their labor? Should we have gratitude for the migrant farmworker in California who grew the tomato we had on our hamburger for lunch? Or the farmer who grew the cattle that was shipped to the butcher who ground the beef. Unless we’d rather live naked, hungry and lawless, we absolutely do.

That fact is, we are connected to everything. Every raindrop, every song, tear and smile from every person who has gone before us. It has all led us to this moment. The modern world wants us to disconnect from our lives so we can spend our time on silly, frivolous things like this blog. We immerse ourselves in the comments and words of complete strangers, but do we know ourselves and our ancestors? The power to disconnect us from our nature should alarm us all, yet on we scroll, searching for something that means something.

Connection. It’s a burden, but it’s a joyful burden we only benefit from by being grateful for it. Even the bad stuff.