A Drop In The Ocean

Life is hard, and then we die. The Stoics knew that being a human in this world is hard work. It’s a dog eat dog world in which Americans alone consume 14 billion chickens a year, millions of pigs, cows, and whatever else we can industrially raise, kill, process, and eat; and for good measure, we foul our nest and pollute our planet to do so. Whether it be Turks slaughtering over a million of their Armenian neighbors with machetes, or Germans gassing and burning six million people in industrial ovens, these are but footnotes in history. As Joseph Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Most people can not wrap their minds around the enormity, and the brutality, of the life and death cycle. Mother Teresa dedicated her life to helping the poor in the shantytowns and gutters of Kolkata, but her diaries show she was struggling with the idea of serving an omniscient and omnipotent God that would create a world like this.

But life is also good. In fact, life can be great if we know how to live it and can look at it from the right perspective. To guide us, we have had master teachers like Moses who gave us ten commandments and 613 laws to distinguish ourselves from animals. Jesus taught us to open our hearts and turn the other cheek. Buddha taught us to be an observer of our minds and thoughts.

But the Persian poet Rumi says it best: You are not a drop in the ocean, but an ocean in a drop. 

Life is not a tragedy because we die, but it can be a tragedy if we don’t live it in full. Let’s begin by loving ourselves as well as our neighbors. Let’s believe not only that we are all one, but that we are The One. Everything is interconnected. There is neither birth nor death. We are each a part of a continuum and it is part of us. We are both the drop and the ocean.

— Sina.

This Newsletter includes items reflecting the personal opinions of their respective authors. This forum is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas and welcomes alternative perspectives submitted in good faith. Neither the original submissions nor any counter-points represent the position of either City Club or Highland Institute. We invite you to engage in these discussions.