Thought Picnic: An island, I am not, I call to be heard

No man is an island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main;

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,

As well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Excerpted from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - MEDITATION XVII - John Donne

I live amongst many

I have in no way experienced the myriad of illnesses, misfortune or adversity that John Donne suffered in his lifetime, but his words speak to me as of someone whose wisdom and manner of words are a deep well of resourceful material in understanding our mankind.

Much as I have striven to live a very independent life to the point to pretending to some sort of unique individuality, I have by reason and by circumstance come to know that no man is an island.

The help beyond I

No, for the things I have seen and the things I have known have come with interaction, be it knowledge that I gain daily from things to improve my skills to other sources of communal interaction that thrive more in the virtual space than in human-to-human contact.

However, I live today because a part of the main, in prayer, in medical help, in support from others have sustained me beyond where the strength I bring to bear on any situation is exhausted.

I hope that when help is required of me, I will be both resourced and willing to stand with another as they have stood with me through thick and thin.

The death of reason

For any man’s death diminished me, for we must strive to prevent what is preventable that the fellowship we have might not be extinguished by forces beyond our control.

It is not so much the death at the end of life that bothers me as the death of reason, the death of the reasonable and the death of reasonableness. For where we have disagreed, we must strive never to be disagreeable and where our beliefs have been at variance we must respect where we stand to accommodate the fact that we cannot all believe the same.

Allow me my thoughts

My thinking might be judged absurd but spare me a moment for I might have not reached the destination you are at and if the vehicle of persuasion cannot move in the direction where you want me to be, I might have taken a different road leading to another place.

We are on a journey where there are very few stops and many things in motion, we go forwards, we go backwards and might get knocked sideways but are rarely stationary. It is the life in motion until the day the bell tolls.

Talk to someone

And on that day when it all seems to end, may the relationships you have built over a lifetime – long or short, be an enduring memory that you once walked the earth, a part of our shared humanity, elated by the living of others as you have been diminished by the death of some.

For no man is an island, marooned from the essence of our humankind. We must talk to each other of our joys and our pains because the eyes of another might well see the things that have blinded us in the maelstrom of circumstances that swirl around us.