My daughter, Becca, is a preschool teacher, so I often have the privilege of hearing about the adventures of very young humans who are still in the most fragile and significant part of their lives. I am a spellbound audience as Becca shares with me the moments of frustration and heartbreak as well as the moments of discovery, humor and joy. Many of these moments are also shared with her student’s families in a daily memo she calls, “Today We…” wherein she relates what “we” did, how “we” struggled, how “we” played and what “we” learned.
Sometimes I think the word “we” might be the most important and underused word in the human language. Speaking from personal experience, I will be the first to admit that I wake up most days, take a mental sledgehammer to “we”, and reduce it into a bunch of tiny pieces and attach myself to one piece called "I". I move through the day feeling disconnected from the other humans with whom I share a home, a neighborhood, a city, a planet. I am obsessed with my own feelings, my own perspective, my own experiences and my own struggles. I try not to feel too guilty about this, as I know that the survival of the fittest instinct is wired in to me as it is into all human beings.
However, through long periods of daily meditation, I have discovered a most tragic and beautiful truth: “I” is an illusion. That sledgehammer that I use to crush up “we” every day exists only in my mind, but it is responsible for all of the worst suffering on earth. “I” is the snake in the garden. It is the root of all intolerance, all oppression, all abuse. “I” is the root of all evil.
“We”, on the other hand is the root of all beauty, all truth and all joy.
Sometimes I imagine the Universal Spirit, which I call “God”, as a preschool teacher. Earth is the classroom where all human beings from different homes and different backgrounds are learning about life. Some of us are privileged and some of us deprived, some of us are mentally healthy and some are mentally ill, some of us find learning easy, some of us do not, but in the eyes of God, we are not separate pieces, just different aspects of one whole.
Sometimes, lying in bed at night, reviewing the day, I try to see it not as “my” day, but as “our” day. I try to see all the things that happened to “me” as things that happened to “us”, and to see all the things that happened to people in my family, in my neighborhood and on my planet as things that happened to me. I think doing this “Today We…” exercise has brought me as close to God’s perspective as I will get while my spirit is bound up with these strings of DNA in this human body.
The pain that comes from doing this exercise is sometimes overwhelming, but the rewards are profound. Doing this exercise always makes me realize that the most intense suffering I have ever experienced has come from feeling disconnected, separate and alone. I have come to believe that this feeling of separation is the root of all human suffering, but there is always a cure for me, and it is the same cure for all of us. All I need to do is to let go of the illusion of “I” and return to the reality of “we”.
I know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I can never experience real joy or real peace as long as I continue to think of myself as separate from others. Joy and peace are eternal truths which stretch past all boundaries. They do not belong to me, they belong to us.
I can never experience the peace, love and joy of God, but we can.
Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, I am there.”
Sometimes, I wish we could do a planetwide experiment, where we all pause for a moment at the end of the day in all our different beds, in all our different time zones, and try to see ourselves as students sharing one giant life in one giant classroom. And then we all say a prayer to whatever God or Higher Power we believe in, and we begin our prayer with the words,
“Today we...”
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