looking through me

Sometimes I feel like a little dot making my way through vast darkness. One pixel in billions. And all I see is me. As though there’s a tiny glow around my little dot barely cutting into the murkiness.

I roam in self-absorbed darkness. Sometimes I run into things and the impact redirects my path a bit or might even launch me in a new direction. Sometimes I bounce along an obstruction for a long time before I reach open space.

But what if the obstacles are people? What if they aren’t forces working against me but beings moving along their own paths? What if I only see the spectrum of light that illuminates my path, but instead of my little dot moving in darkness my little dot is really moving in a sea of other little dots with their own spectrum of light surrounding them?

If that’s true—and I think it is—then every time my path crosses or bounces off or runs alongside something it might be an opportunity not a hindrance.

What if each encounter was a divine appointment?

I forget my life isn’t all about me. My path is interwoven into lives and journeys all around me. Even when I don’t recognize it, my dot is in play interacting with other dots. And I might be affecting their trajectories, too.

We’re specks in a massive story that dwarfs us all, yet we each matter. Each dot is a full person. The sea of humanity is made up of individual humans. What if I saw the real lives all around me? What if I lived aware the dot next to me has hopes and dreams and fears and feelings just like I do? Or maybe that dot’s having a rough day and could use grace from me when our shoulders rub at work or in the checkout line. Maybe I keep colliding with this dot because I have something to offer or a way to be of service. Or maybe there’s something I need to learn from that individual if I stopped viewing her as a frustrating impediment in my way.

When I look beyond myself it’s much easier to see my fellow dots. It’s much easier to see our colors bleeding together into our shared scene of the story.