We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable.

Posted on by Live & Learn

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The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules?…Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

~ Paul Hawken, You Are Brilliant and The Earth is Hiring

This is an excerpt from Hawken’s Commencement Address at the University of Portland in 2009 found in Paul Loeb’s book: The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. (Basic Books, 2014). Hawken worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma, Alabama; founded leading natural-foods wholesaler Erewhon and the Smith & Hawken garden supply company; and currently heads a thin-panel solar company . His books include The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins, 1993) and Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007). Carbon, The Business of Life will be published in 2014. Hawken’s website can be found at paulhawken.com.

Credits: Photograph – Your Eyes Blaze Out

25 thoughts on “We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable.”

    1. “Even in a seemingly futile moment or losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it.”

      ~ Paul Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

  3. This is breathtaking. So many lines grab me, but the one that really punched me in the solar plexus was “Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.” It’s so easy to become jaded, cynical, complacent. Must. Fight. Against. That.

  4. Very powerful words. To explain God’s creation would take many lifetimes of words. But to experience it can happen every day, hour and minute. As those word said; stop with the TV for just a while and look around. You will see the greatest show on earth! To grasp what you see for what it really is, the depth of how it works, the beauty that it has, it’s place in this world, is a gift to each that no words can totally describe.

    1. Beautiful stated Bill. You and Hawken seem to be almost squarely aligned in your thinking. Check out the other excerpt that I shared from his speech below in my reply to Val’s comment

    1. I felt the same way Val, so inspired by this piece…here’s one other excerpt that I think you’ll enjoy:

      This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded , and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food— but all that is changing.

      ~ Paul Hawken in “You Are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring” in Paul Loeb’s “The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear” (Basic Books)

  13. That quote about the stars by Ralph Waldo Emerson (I remembered the quote and had forgotten who said it, thanks for the reminder) has stuck with me since you first posted it. Such a metaphor for life, all the things we take for granted. There are so many more things to praise than to criticize in my life. This is an important post. Thank you.

    1. Yes, Carolann. I did post the quote a while back and felt that I needed another shot of it — another wake-up call. And agree, that this is an important post. Thank you.

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