Life is Relationship

A blade of grass cannot survive without the soil or the air or the rain; without these life-giving forces, it would have no choice but to wither and die. Likewise, we, despite our vast technological achievements and Nobel prizes and towers that touch the sky, cannot survive on our own. The saying is true: no man is an island. He cannot exist without air, water, food, sleep, sunlight, breath, love. Whether we like it or not, we are thoroughly dependant creatures, and that is the ultimate reminder that we are not islands, and therefore, we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, in control of our lives.

One popular explanation of the universe is that it all emerged out of chaos. I can’t seem to find it in myself to believe in chaos at all. I look around and all I see is a delicate balance of life, one creature living off another, the air giving breath to all, the rain replenishing and the vine giving forth fruit. That is order, not chaos. And chaos, if such a thing exists, could never create order. If it does exist, I suppose we must have created it ourselves. Jackson Pollock slung paint on a canvas and people called it art, but no one in their right mind would suggest that there was order to it; that was not the point. In similar fashion, we, as human beings, have, on a much larger scale, slung our paint around the canvas of our world, creating helplessly chaotic situations for ourselves, wars and bombings and economic turmoil and the like. But nature, in stark contrast, is perfect order, perfect harmony, a delicate balance, a graceful arc of life and death. I don’t mean to sound earthy or hippie or anything. It’s just that there is a fine line between the order of the universe and the way we live our lives as human beings. We so often preach the sovereignty of self, but nature always preaches relationship.