From the moment anything – an idea, a speck of dust, a person – exists, it is in relationship to everything else.

From the moment you are a pair of cells, you are in relationship to and with the furthest star in the furthest galaxy, as you are right now: To the sun that helps keep us all alive, to the planet you live on, to the desk you’re sitting at, to the screen you’re reading from, to me who wrote this.

Relationship is an experience, one which is most often known as a qualitative one, for example, that of parent and child or of lovers. However, relationship is also an experience which is quantitative; it has the capacity to be measured. By this is meant that where ever one thing is, it will be at some distance and angle relative to everything else.

Relationship is about ratios and geometries: The former relating to the qualitative aspect and the latter to the quantitative one, but in point of fact, the so-called lines between these two aspects do not actually exist. They are only in separation, or made dual as a tool for an imagined perception of how things are, allowing us to “understand” the world around us through tools of our own devising. However, in this “understanding”, we lose all meaning because nothing is directly experienced, but is instead filtered through a tool which is imaginary in the first place and constructed out of our denial of reality in the second place.

However, because we are finite, we can only measure and experience from our own perspective. As a result, relationship becomes relative and we derive our meaning (or lack of it) from proximity: The further away from our relative position something/someone is, the less meaning for us personally. This is because the closer something is to us, the more immediate and direct its influence, therefore affecting us on more personal levels of experience. As you read this, or anyone else’s work, we are brought close to you. If I hadn’t written this, and you hadn’t read it, this connection would not have been felt and/or experienced. Because of it, we are now aware of relationship; it was always there because we exist, but its proximity has been brought closer and therefore its relevance to us personally is now felt.

But it needs to be understood that in measuring, we find the starting point of all delusion: We cannot count the particles of love any better than we can directly count the particles that comprise the entire universe, although we deceive ourselves into trying. So, this has nothing to do with reality.

Reality is that everything is infinitely connected because of the nature of relationship. Therefore, everything we do affects (both emotive and active) everything else. All of this is built of tiny details of giving; both negative and positive. For instance:

The smile you give a stranger as they walk by…
Who had a really discouraging day and is going home to their children…
That parent, as a result of that smile, feels better and walks in the door that way…
That parent has a little more patience with those kids…
Those children feel a little more certain of the love that parent has for them…
So they have a little more compassion for the lonely kid at school…

The line doesn’t end there, in fact, it goes on infinitely, eventually coming back to you. Therefore it’s always in our own best interests to start and continue all the chains of events that come from us with love, compassion, kindness, and thoughtfulness. Not as milk-toasty individuals, but with passion and discipline, because everything we do is important.