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RELATIVE RELATIVITY
DEAR DIARY:
Einstein was right. Everything is relative.
What Einstein failed to go on to say is: Relativity is EVERYTHING. In fact, relativity is EVERYBODY.
We are all related in some manner, a fact at once beguiling and frustrating, at times horrifying to think (did I really come from the same evolutionary roots as that third-world dictator and that European princess?), and at times provocative (I may share wellsprings with Einstein himself or Nelson Mandela, or even Charlie Chaplin).
If we are all kin, most of us don’t like to admit it except when it’s convenient.
Sometimes, the same folks who go on and on about how they’ve traced their roots all the way back to King Henry or the Vikings, are the same folks who don’t like to talk about the fact that if they go far enough back before that, they are also kin to Kunta Kinte, Adolf Hitler, Moses, Rube Goldberg, Henny Youngman and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Within the bowels, we share common ancestry–and you have to believe that, whether you’re an evolutionist or a religionist.
So, if we’re all in the same family, why do we treat cousins and sisters and offspring different from neighbors, foreigners and aliens? Why is our own blood so much more palatable than a stranger’s? Why are my lawn weeds nicer than your lawn weeds?
It’s not only a small world, it’s a world interwoven with genes and bloodlines and ancestries. Unfortunately, it’s also a world of many fences and few gates, a world of barely-suppressed hostility that can become offensive at any given moment, a world of more should-have’s than can-do’s, a world where the meek, though blessed, are often oppressed simply because they do not place aggression at the top of their priority lists.
Where is the good in the world, then, you ask?
Well, it’s like everything else in the universe–the good is there, you simply have to fade the bad stuff out for a while so you can notice it.
An audience laughing at the same humor is sharing a commonality that transcends the petty differences of the moment.
An old man stopping to pat a small child on the head is making a quantum leap in time and without knowing it, is by the same act, massaging the cosmos with a bit of kindness.
A firefighter who suddenly and without thinking risks life and limb to save the life of someone who in normal situations wouldn’t seem worth the extension of a cordial greeting…that firefighter is unconsciously affirming the fragile but extensive thread of hope that cobwebs the world and makes itself available at the strangest times.
It’s out there. You have to either take time to notice it, or act quickly when the kindness urge strikes, so that you won’t have time to figure out why you should not be doing something so wimpy as generating an unconditional act of sweetness
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
(adapted from the book Dad’s Tweed Coat, Small Wisdoms Hidden Comforts Unexpected Joys by Jim Reed)