We are only as good as the worst of us

I've taken the time to stop and think and realize that we are never as alone as any of us care to be. In the stark, moonlit sky there are countless stars just as in life there are countless faces, people we see but don't see through to their being. If you stand on a bridge or atop a tall hill or on some quiet overlook, fingers entwined with your love and look- just look out over all of the cars and the houses and buses full of people, people with thoughts and ideas and friends and loves and worries and failures. You'll sit and wonder as I've sat and wondered how all of those people, the hundreds and thousands and millions of people are feeling at that instant. And then one of those people is bound to be brother-in-law to your best friends cousin and then we're right where we began, with you on a bridge or atop a tall hill or on some quiet overlook, fingers entwined with your love. And in any given moment, any given place be it Egypt or Japan, the top of the Eiffel Tower, you are bound to see someone who knows someone who once bumped into someone or something and you'll know in that instant of palpable clarity- we are never as alone as any of us care to be. As tenuous as that single strand of connection is, it is there and it is claiming you and owning you and saying to you loudly that YOU HAVE A PLACE IN THIS WORLD. It is carved out and set out before you to walk and to wander, and you'll see the millions of faces each day that have their own paths and have you to thank for owning your place and allowing them theirs. I stand still in the busy-bee streets of the city and caution the blur of movement, of bustling people with places to be and people to see and I watch them and love them all equally, individually. I must have been one of them, somewhere to someone like me who watches. If I was loved by one person, somewhere who watched then I've been loved by thousands and millions and all who loved or was loved by that one person, somewhere. And now when I stand on a bridge or atop a tall hill or on some quiet overlook, fingers entwined with my love I LOVE and I claim every person in every car, every house, every building. I claim them my own, as my fellow travelers on the paths they have carved out for themselves. And I love them with all of the love I possess and I wish them goodwill in all that they do, then I think. I think if we all loved the world that we see stretched before us then there might just be less room in the world for anger or bitterness, keeping the throngs of tired and poor at the helm of society. If we all loved the people about us for just being there on our path, near our side as we clamor through crowds then we might all be able to fix up this place we're all traveling. If we loved all the people on all of our paths then they might love others on all of their paths and soon, since we're all tenuously bound to each other then we might be able to send love about to the places where it's sorely needed. If we think less like billions and more like just one then we might be able to live all together on the only home we know.