There is no “I” separate and distinct from the “me” that feels and thinks and acts. We may believe there is, but we are mistaken.

There is no “other” separate and distinct from the “me” that feels and thinks and acts. We may believe there is, but we are mistaken.

There is no “I” or “other.”

Why does this matter? Because believing in an “I” and an “other” has gotten us into a lot of trouble.

When your left leg aches while your right feels fine, does the right belittle, berate, or betray the left? When your left eye goes blind while your right sees clearly, does the right criticize, critique, and chastise the left? When your body needs to sleep while your mind races on, does your mind denigrate, disparage, and defame your body?

Just as the different parts of a person work together and support each other for good, so too should the different persons of the world work together and support each other for the collective good. For just as the left leg is one with the right leg, the left eye one with the right eye, the body one with the mind, so to are all of us one and the same.

If we disagree with our beloved, do we argue as separate beings or compromise as one?

If we face strife in our communities, do we take sides as separate beings or come together as one?

If we feel unseen, disrespected, belittled, forgotten, attacked, and broken by members of differing ideological camps, political parties, or warring nations, do we bar our windows, lock our doors, close our ears, and turn our backs as separate beings, or do we open our hearts and minds and listen with compassion to the tiny hurt child inside those we dislike in an effort to realize the truth that they are one with us?

The cells that comprise my body are ever-changing, always growing and decaying, becoming and breaking apart; I am the continuation of my mother and my father, and they the continuation of their ancestors. The food I eat is made of cells that were once in you, and the food you eat is made of cells that were once in me.

The matter in you and the matter in me will someday come together and form a tree or a butterfly or a tiny crab; they may even work together to energize and fuel another person.

So what am I if not a smattering of matter, a collection of building blocks used infinitely to create different entities. What are we if not grains of sand upon life’s shore pressed together into sandcastles until a wave washes us clean and we begin a new.

What am I if not you? What are you if not me? What are we if not them? What are us if not other?

God is the master craftsman who constructed universes filled with particles that obey obscure laws of nature. If we can see that, if we can accept our part in His play, then perhaps we can find ease and comfort in the notion that there is no birth and there is no death, for we spin ever onwards, continually joining different tapestries from now until always.

There is no “I” or “other,” only we, the ingredients of life’s great feast.