The Lens:
My windows (and, maybe more significantly, my shades) were all open as we were in the middle of a heat wave – atypical weather for San Francisco. I woke up somewhere around 3:30am. A bright flash, then another. A low rumble, and a few more flashes. Heat waves are unusual. A summer storm is extraordinarily rare.
I like my sleep. It takes a lot for me to willingly give up any of it. So bizarre was what was happening, I had to get up to take a look. I could see a storm way out in the horizon – constant lightening with increasing rumbling. I watched, . . . and watched, . . . and watched.
It’s not like I haven’t experienced summer storms. I have been to many places where I have seen and heard the same thing. Only those were different. They weren’t here in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was a complete anomaly for the area in terms of everything – not just for the amount of lightening, thunder, and spurts of rain, but for the duration. It went on and on with no end in sight. Even though I knew I would pay for the lack of sleep, I kept watching, thinking it would be over soon.
After about an hour’s time, and with the realization the storm had quite a bit of life left in it, I had to tear myself away, like a child from their parent’s leg on the first day of school, and go back to bed. Bolts still lit my room, but the low rumbling thunder lulled me back to sleep.
The next morning, much to my astonishment, the storm was still going on. The lightning wasn’t so obvious, but the thunder and rain were. Crazy was the word that came to mind. Just crazy.
As I was going about my morning, with the thunder in the background, I thought, “There has never been anything even close to this in my lifetime, and, at my age, that is saying something.”
The Refraction:
It only took a few moments before I realized what an absurd thought that was. First, I am really not old. Second, even if I was (I mean that in terms life expectancy), what are the years of my life in the big scheme of things?
Let’s see. Per Forbes, (https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/05/15/what-was-it-like-when-the-first-humans-arose-on-earth/#a2d685169975), the planet was 4 billion years old before there were any signs of life. 500 million years passed with pre-human life evolving. There is more to the timeline but let’s jump to humans who didn’t make their appearance until about 1 million years ago. These are all unfathomable numbers to me. Even if I were 90 years old – long lived by human standards – I can’t think of any comparison (drop in the bucket, needle in a haystack) that could compare how infinitesimal my life is in terms of time.
I am humbled by my smallness. Yet, combine my smallness with the smallness of all the other people on this earth, and the impact becomes significant. As an individual, I am really nothing. As a species, I am great, for better or worse. Just consider the impact of human behavior on the planet in the 2+ centuries since the Age of Industrialization (again, an infinitesimal amount of time). The enormous impact isn’t that of one person but of the collective.
I do not mean to say there are no significant individuals. We have our leaders, our influencers (whether good or bad – a relative supposition) who guide the masses. But, you need the masses for there to be an the effect of a leader or influencer.
We Americans live in an individualistic vs. collective society. That isn’t necessarily bad. But, we tend to vastly overinflate our individual worth and drastically turn away from our insignificance, our smallness as individuals.
In a collective society, we do what is best for the whole. There are many debatable points as to the merits of both individualism or collectivism. One notable difference between the two is responsibility. When we are living for the whole and not for ourselves, we lose responsibility for our actions. We act as we are meant to for the good of the whole.
In an individualistic society, we have to think about and choose what to do. With choice comes responsibility, and we must be willing to accept there are and will be consequences, good or bad, for our choices. We must also realize that even though we live in an individualistic society, we are inextricably part of a collective.
The impact of what we do affects not only ourselves, but the whole. We can do whatever we want, but, in the end, what we do for ourselves, we do for the whole. It would stand to reason then, that what we do for the whole, we do for ourselves – a reciprocal relationship. So, when you help yourself, you help the whole, and, when you help the whole, you help yourself. Conversely, when you hurt yourself, you hurt the whole, and, when you hurt the whole, you hurt yourself.
This may be an oversimplification and there are exceptions to everything. Yet, it seems we are becoming more divided and have lost any inclination (if there ever was any) to look beyond ourselves. We mistake individualism for isolationism. We forget the whole. We miss that it is the whole, not the individual, that is life. No man is an island, so John Donne said. We may be small, and we may need the whole in order to be an individual, but contrary to what may seem like a case made above that we are worthless as individuals, our importance depends on the individual – it depends on you. It depends on your thoughts, your choices and your actions that in turn become the thoughts, choices and actions of others that in turn become the collective.