We are a continual process of exchange with our environment.
I have been reflecting on a statement from a.youtube clip I watched over the break from a 2016 presentation by Tom Chi, inventor and co-founder of Google X “We are a continuous flame of inter-becoming”. He describes in practical terms how everything and everyone is interconnected, and how we are all eternal and ephemeral at the same time.
The stuff that we are made of is essentially immortal in that the electrons of the atoms that comprise our bodies have been around a billion billion times longer that the universe has existed. And … we are also ephemeral, 98% of all the atoms in the body cycle out, are exchanged, within a year.
7% of what you are now will not be there tomorrow (this is about the mass of your arm).Even the calcium in your bones cycles out within a year. You are definitely not who you are a year ago. You are inter-becoming with the earth.
We are truely connected with everything. 4 – 5 days from now the breath you are breathing will be on the other side of the world. Part of you today was the plants a couple of days ago. Part of you tomorrow will be the plants.
We are not the separate ‘beings’ that we often perceive ourselves to be.
Thich Nhat Hanh has coined the term ““Inter-being”, it is a word that is not in the dictionary (yet), but if we combine the pre-fix “inter” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. “You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing.
In Tom Chi’s talk he referred to us as a “continuous flame of inter-becoming”, we are continually changing, and intimately connected with our environment.
These concepts leave me feeling both connected and expanded at the same time. You too?
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