This is one of my favorite things. I am surprised it has taken me this long to mention it here.

I first heard it meditating with the Buddhists here in town years ago, but I think it is applicable way beyond just meditation though. It can be useful in our every day lives.

Pick a few things today.

They can be anything. Your breakfast, your car, your chair, your clothes, whatever.

Think of how many hands it took to get any of these things to you.

The people who secured the raw materials, the people who assembled them, the people who got them to wherever you got them from. There is a whole chain for everything we have.

It goes further than this too.

No one could have collected the raw materials or processed them or delivered them without the technology to do it, which came from people well before them.

This goes for every step of the process.

This isn’t even to mention the fact that none of them, or us, would be here without a long lineage of ancestors who came before.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: human babies are useless. None of us would have survived even our first few days if someone had not agreed to take care of us. Hell, someone has to carry us around inside their body for 9 months for us to even get here.

There are no self-sufficient people.

We all exist using the tools and technology and wisdom of those who came before us. We all need help from others in some way. Even if you live in the woods hunting elk with a recurve bow, someone had to invent the bow.

Let yourself explore this today, while also giving yourself credit for the place you occupy and the role you play in the web that connects us all.