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Amazing Possibilities!

  • Writer's pictureMatthew Kelly

We Are All Connected



If we reject the challenge to grow in virtue, we fall easily into a

minimalism that manifests in the two great excuses. I have already

mentioned “This is who I am!” We often make this excuse not in celebration

of our authentic self but in defense of a substitute lazy and

defeated self. The second of the great excuses that we use to justify

our self-destructive behavior is “I am not hurting anybody!”

One of the governing principles of the universe is connection. Everything

in creation is connected. When we pollute and scar the earth

by emitting toxins and rape the land of her natural resources, the earth

responds with rising water levels, earthquakes, hurricanes, and harmful

ozone rays. The earth is not retaliating; it is simply trying to heal itself.

Similar connections exist between people. To believe that what

we do in our hometown does not affect people at the other end of

the country or the other end of the world is the na vet , ignorance,

and self-centeredness of the modern era. There are no personal acts.

Everything we do affects the people around us. Everything we do affects

all people, sooner or later. The sum of all human action is passed

down through history.

In times past, when humankind lived more in tune with nature,

when we were tied to the earth, we understood this with great clarity.

In those times, we understood very clearly that if we polluted the water

supply upstream, the people downstream would be endangered.

Today, the rivers are not so easy to see and recognize.

We buy our water in bottles, believing that there will always be

clean water for us to drink. In politics and business, in relationships

and the arts, when we pollute the water upstream, the people downstream

suffer.


Just because you do something in the privacy of your home, behind

closed doors, with no one else involved and no one else to witness

the act, does not mean that that act does not affect other people.

Every human act affects the future of humanity. Your actions, however

private, have consequences for you and for all of humanity. Your

actions profoundly affect your inner reality, and sooner or later your

inner reality will seek an outer expression through your words and

actions or your silence and inaction.


Everything God created in the universe and beyond is connected.

In ways we will perhaps never understand, we are all connected. Too

often we think of ourselves as different or set apart or independent.

Sometimes these are just words and illusions. We are much more

alike than we are different. We are so much more together than we

are apart, and infinitely more interdependent than we are independent.

When we hurt ourselves, we hurt everyone. “I’m not hurting

anyone!” is just another attempt to avoid personal responsibility in a

world where everything we think, do, and say affects someone, somewhere,

sooner or later.


Matthew Kelly


From Perfectly Yourself

Click Here to get your copy

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