Others

I spent the majority of the weekend in Maryland celebrating a soon-to-be-bride. It was lovely, but left little time to write. Still, even without a keyboard or pen, I could recognize myself as a writer. There were so many stories that went through my head. There were so many moments when I grew quiet, searching for the right words, working my way towards an idea.

On the drive home, I sat silently in the back seat, watching farms come and go from view, catching glimpses of houses among crowded trees, reading signs for small businesses that couldn’t possibly be thriving. I thought deeply about each one.

I am always thinking of others. I try my best to always be considerate, but more than that, I am always considering. I know that there is always more than one story to be told. There are endless possibilities. There are so many different ways of seeing.

I don’t recognize myself as a writer because I write, but because I know how to look at the world from different angles. I know that I must. I understand empathy. I feel it. I believe it to be the most important trait I can have as a writer and a human being. I recognize myself as a writer because I recognize myself in everyone else.

Driving past these other lives, I considered all of the many ways my own life could be different. Not better, not worse, just different. The slightest changes in circumstance or choice could have led me somewhere else entirely. I could be someone else entirely. I could be any one of these people, here.

We live our lives differently, and in some ways, singularly. Our exact experiences cannot be repeated by anyone else. Your life is uniquely yours.

But life itself belongs to all of us. We are connected in this deeply meaningful way. We are all working, and sometimes struggling, to survive. We all hope for happiness. We all keep moving forward until we reach the end.

Too often we forget this. We forget to consider that each of our personal stories is only a small piece of the larger human story we are all constructing, together. This forgetting makes us inconsiderate. We learn to see only one way when many ways exist. There are endless possibilities. We are endlessly possible.

Empathy is as simple as remembering. It is as easy as looking at another and seeing our shared humanity. It is the greatest lesson in understanding and compassion that I have ever learned. It is essential, not because I owe it to anyone else, or they owe it to me, but because we owe it to each other, which is something different.

On the drive back, I made connections. I wrote stories in my head. I pieced them all together and created something larger, something new. I thought of all the lives I am not living, and the one I am. I considered the possibilities all around me. I hoped for happiness.

I stared out across fields coming in and out of view. I worked towards an idea. I thought of others. I got closer and closer to home.

Like The Spiders

I don’t kill spiders. At least, not intentionally. That’s something you should know about me.

When they are discovered indoors, people shriek at the very sight of them, raising the weapon of their feet in self-defense. But I hear the shrieks and come running. If I make it in time, I can save a life. I understand that they are only little creatures who have lost their way. To fear them is to misinterpret their purpose. They are not here for us.

I put them in cups and take them back outside. “Go on, little buddy” I’ll sometimes say. I watch them go home.

Surely it is compassion that inspires this, a certain empathy for all living things, who wish for no more and no less than longevity. To continue is the universal ambition. To help others achieve this is kindness.

But what keeps me from harming these little spiders is more than the recognition that they are living things. It is admiration for the lives they are living. It is the way their intricate webs of lace are nothing more than a means of survival. They do not strive to create beauty, and yet, their soft weavings adorn the world.

I’ve never had to work as hard as a spider for any meal. They are patient. They are planners. They devise elegant traps. So perhaps it is only the balance of the world that they should so often be trapped themselves – within buildings, under shoes, inside their own tiny bodies, unable to be anything else.

Yet, it is empathy that keeps me from accepting that balance. It is experience that gives my heart to both the trappers and the trapped. It is wisdom that reminds me they are often one in the same. I have been both. I have spun webs of words to snare a thought. I have felt trapped inside my own life. I have gone about the busy work of surviving only to later discover its beauty. I have been, all my life, like the spiders.

Once, in India, I found myself among a group of trees adorned with prayer flags. There was no order to them, no logical design. They criss-crossed and overlapped and twisted over each other. Some had lost the vibrancy of their color in the elements. Others shined in their freshness. They blew gently in the breeze.

I thought of this web, of this weaving of prayers, of the people who created it. I thought of the way these beautiful offerings adorn the world. And although I’ve never really understood what prayer is, I thought, maybe it is this.

Maybe it is simply going about the busy, important work of surviving. Maybe it is compassion, and empathy, and kindness. Maybe it is about trapping and feeling trapped. Maybe it is patience and planning. Maybe it is understanding balance and learning how to accept it. Maybe it is about saving what we can save.

Maybe it is as easy as following the example of the spiders, their beauty a by-product of their purpose. When their webs get torn down, they build new ones. They never stop creating. Their very lives depend on it. This is something close to prayer.

Tonight I found a spider in my kitchen. I scooped him up in a cup and walked him out into the yard. “Go on, little buddy” I told him, shaking him out onto the grass. Above me the sky was spun with elegant cobwebs of constellations. The intricate webs of this world are enough to catch my heart.