DAY 15 – INSIDE THE SHELL

I am talking to a friend who had taken a low flying airplane ride around the planet. When he looked down he saw people walking around and intermingling with one another, buildings projecting up in city after city and cars, trains and airplanes in continuous movement. He also saw the presence of nature with animals roaming in the wild, forests teeming with trees, mountains rising above the level plains and oceans occupying a vast amount of the earth.

While observing the visible he could not know the unobservable. He was unable to see inside the buildings or below the earth’s exterior. He could not know the kind of relationships a person has with other people. He could not get inside the minds of human beings or have a sense of a person’s underlying psychological makeup.

The surface of everything covers up what lies within it. The skin of an apple is the shell that covers up what is inside it. The outer layer of a baseball is the shell that covers the materials inside it. The skin of a human being is the shell that covers every organ, tissue and cell that lies within as well as the thoughts and feelings that each of us have.

Life has more intricacies than what appears evident. So many events and situations have underlying components to them that without deeper insights into these components people will continue to have problems that will plague human beings generation after generation. Solutions to human difficulties require an understanding of what lies beneath the surface.

Knowing that people have relationship problems does not tell us why they happen. Seeing that people do not have food to eat, clean water to drink or a suitable home to live in does not tell us the full story behind this. Realizing that there are people who dislike or hate others because of their nationality, religion, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation does not give us the deeper reasons for such animosity. Realizing that the earth has environmental problems does not give us an answer into how to combat it.

For a better future it becomes imperative to know not only how the pieces of life fit together but also the underlying reasons for why something occurs. One without the other gives us half of what we need. Both insights are necessary if we are to take the appropriate actions conducive for a personally better life and a collectively better world.

Because of my friend’s observations of the visible I now realize that there is so much more to life than what appears on the surface. By delving deeper I will be able to understand our world in a more holistic manner.