There Are No Isolated Events

Sometimes we speak about things as though they happen by themselves.

An accident.

An illness.

A death.

A decision.

One event, affecting one person, at one moment in time.

But I am beginning to wonder if there really is such a thing as an isolated event.

There is an old saying:

“No man is an island.”

Perhaps that is true in more ways than we realize.

Every life touches another life.

A person belongs to a family, a circle of friends, a workplace, a neighborhood, a community.

They speak words that someone remembers.

They make choices that affect other choices.

They help shape people who will go on to shape still others.

The circles keep widening.

The pandemic made this impossible to ignore.

Something that began far away eventually entered homes, schools, stores, parks, hospitals, workplaces, and communities around the world.

What happened to one person did not remain with that one person.

One illness affected a family.

One loss changed many lives.

One decision could protect someone we might never meet.

For a while, the world was given a very visible reminder of something that had always been true:

We are connected.

And yet so much of our attention is still given to what separates us.

Countries.

Cultures.

Politics.

Race.

Religion.

Beliefs.

The countless lines we draw between us and them.

Some of those differences are real and meaningful. They are part of the richness of being human.

But sometimes we become so focused on the differences that we forget that there is something deeper beneath them.

We need one another.

We affect one another.

We belong to something larger than ourselves.

The person we pass on the street may never know our name, and yet something we do may still become part of their day.

A stranger’s decision may one day affect our own life without either of us ever knowing it.

Someone we will never meet may be doing something right now that will eventually touch the life of someone we love.

The connections are everywhere.

Most of them are invisible.

Maybe understanding this would change the way we move through the world.

Maybe we would become a little more hesitant to divide.

A little more inclined to listen.

A little more accepting of one another.

A little more aware that what happens to another human being is never entirely separate from us.

And perhaps understanding our connection to one another might even help us understand our place in the world.

Maybe purpose is not always some enormous thing we are meant to accomplish.

Maybe sometimes purpose is found in the way our life touches another life.

And that life touches another.

And another.

Until something that began with one person becomes part of a world they may never live long enough to see.

There are no isolated lives.

Perhaps there are no isolated events either.

Only ripples meeting ripples,

again and again,

across one enormous sea.