As I flew into the great Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area the other night, it occurred to me that every one of those lights down there is a story. A big story. In this tiny area on the earth’s surface, there are, according to the internet, 9,973,383 stories in this photo. Almost a million lifetimes are spread out before me (whoa…maybe eternity is just this moment). As I contemplated this, I got very emotional thinking about how large my story looms in my head sometimes. Like it’s the only one.
But it so much is not.
My way of looking at things is so limited and bound to my experiences. I’m not saying that’s inherently wrong, but my word, when I started imagining stories for every light I saw, I felt this expansion, this vision of how I just can’t be so worried about my lived experiences. Yes, they matter to me, but there are so many other ways to see the world. I felt this strange, unexpected, actual love for all the little lights and all the trying and loving and failing and being real that was happening down there. I started weeping into my airplane window. It was quite a moment. And I thought so many things:
What if?
What if I actually am a spoiled, privileged brat, worrying about the things I worry about
What if I’m not and my life is actually hard because it’s hard for me
What if I’m just average in the trouble chart
What if I’m the actual smartest person on my cul-de-sac but no one knows it
What if my family is extraordinary and ordinary at the same time and I don’t have to worry about what I think I have to worry about because down in those dots of light at the very moment I was staring down at them someone was…
performing a lifesaving surgery
crying
considering suicide
typing the last page of their next book
writing legislation that will affect our entire country
watching netflix
sleeping
abusing drugs
abusing someone they loved
deciding to stop drinking
taking their first drink
praying
worshipping
deciding there is no God
suddenly feeling the love of God for the first time
and on and on and on…
What does this all mean? Should I feel guilty or superior or lame or intimidated or pitying or disgusted?
Nope. I can only feel what I am experiencing right now, in this moment.
But it matters to me that I’m smaller than I see myself sometimes. In a good way. I’m not the center of the universe.
Maybe I can forgive people who are cowardly or different or have actually harmed me. Because they have a story. They are one of the lights.
Maybe I can imagine that my framework is only workable for me and that there are 9,973,382 other frameworks that are good.
Forgiveness seems a reasonable response to all that light we are all throwing off, since we will never be all the same
My Red Door Days 