i live my life based on the philosophy
i read in a tumblr post
once

the long and short of the text was that
after your were finished with a life
you got to what you thought were the pearly gates
of heaven
or hell
or limbo
or wherever
and you started to see,
though there was no one else there,
that you’d been here before
thousands upon millions upon billions of times
and it was revealed that you
are and were and would be
everyone

and every time you had been mean
you had simply been being mean
to a former [or future] iteration of yourself

and every time you had been kind
or received kindness
that was you
and you and you
all along

and it’s not that i can only thing about
the consequences of cruelty
or the benefits of kindness
if it is in relation to my own being

no

what got me about that philosophy
was the idea that
everyone around me
was so much closer than originally thought —

i spend so much time thinking i’m
a complete alien to the rest of the human race, that i
will never understand what someone is going through
and they certainly will never even try to see
what’s going on in my mind,
and everything
everyone
seems so damn foreign
and far, far away
and even when i think about
the interdependent web of all existence
there’s still a distance
i place between myself and my fellow [hu]man

but that one silly little tumblr post

it made my neighbor
and my ancestor
and the writer of the book i’m reading
and the anchor of the news show i’m fearing
and the baby in front of me
and the octogenarian on the other side of the world
and literally everyone in between
it made them all seem so much closer to me
in a sense of peace i had never before experienced

so i know that it’s probably not true

but what if it is?

and i tend to live my life based on “what ifs”
[as long as they don’t hurt anyone else]

and this particular “what if” has the tendency
to encourage
the opposite

so maybe think about it

or search out that og post
[it’s actually a pre-written short story called the egg by andy weir,
i just came across it on tumblr one day
as you do]

because i think it’s worth
the philosophizing
and the comfort
and the hope
it brings