Quantum Strangeness

Here's another secret of quantum strangeness from the annals of the quark. All events, as to their quiddity, are equally significant.

The daring leap of a tree frog from the spigot of your garden hose, to her sanctuary in a pot of begonias, is as important as the birth of a new political party, or an earthquake in Brooklyn.

The universe is not just as you see it, but as the frog sees it. Your attention magnifies a breath of August breeze into a hurricane; but for the frog, all human catastrophes are as weightless clouds in a distant sky. They pass soundlessly overhead.

Why do you assume that your chief concern should be mine? The liberal wants to convince me, the conservative wants to convert me. Neither allows me to create myself. But that is one task I can do better than anyone else. Let me follow the wondrous river of my own interest over all its rocks, through the rough waters of responsibility and consequence, and I will learn my lesson much better than you can teach me.

A Greek philosopher said, 'Be kind: everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.' A Jewish carpenter said, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.' Here's another piece of advice: if you want to see radical transformation in humanity, stop trying to change each other.

Have you ever walked the labyrinth? One who seems closest to the goal may suddenly find their way veering far off. When two pilgrims pass, they don't know who is nearing the center, and who is drifting further from it. Compassion is precisely this not knowing. All they can do is bow.

In truth, you are not a pilgrim in a maze. You are the labyrinth itself. You are the whole entanglement, with room in your lost heart for all who wander, pathless strangers, ancient friends.