As a boy I would fantasize that I was the center of the universe. My consciousness was reality. All beings surrounding me were there to serve and support.
Somewhere along the way I read that it is a common fantasy of children. True for me. With maturity, I learned to understand myself as one of the many, part of a larger whole.
I learned that I am a citizen with reciprocal responsibilities for the whole. I am a member of the body politic. In time I met my responsibility to register with the selective service, then later found myself swearing to protect and defend the Constitution I inherited. I donned the uniform and went through the motions of military service in our political leadership’s ill-conceived, twisted imperialistic pursuit in Southeast Asia, performing duties that had absolutely nothing to do with protecting our country from enemies foreign and domestic.
I returned stateside numbed, confused, and reluctant to discuss where I’d spent the previous 19 months, discovering refreshment in graduate school, where I was exposed to theories of organizational behavior, critical analysis, public policy formation and government management. I was taken with the Athenian Oath, sworn by the men of classic Athens, declaring that they would leave their homeland greater than they received it. The oath is etched into the granite lintel at Syracuse University’s stately Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where I earned my master’s in journalism.
I soldiered onward along life’s journey wearing the establishment’s uniform of suit and tie while performing activities for credible employers before starting my own firm, embracing marriage, fatherhood, and grandfatherhood, all the while accumulating friends — gobs of them — in multiple states and countries across not just years, mind you, but through decades.
The journey has included work involving economics, marketing, communications and public relations, dipping into the knowledge wells of a wide range of professions and business sectors. That has entailed absorbing an enormous amount of information as well as familiarity with macro means data. Our planet has a global population of 8 billion and a U.S. headcount of 341.8 million, where the current GDP is $26.9 trillion. My point is, I worked with big real world data sets.
Despite that, here I am, now, feeling at times like the boy I was, experiencing my being at times the center of the universe, my consciousness as the hub of reality, and the surrounding people and their activities like movie extras in the background of my reality. I have been puzzled by these feelings. Where do they come from?
Let me quickly emphasize, I say feelings and add that I have not admitted this in public. And I would not admit it until now were it not for something that recently happened.
I am in the gym, my workout done. To the side is a small circle of people in conversation.
The person diagonally across from me appears to have a sparkle of light that encapsulates his feet. The person to whom he is speaking is framed with his own sparkling footlights. On the floor is a kind of overlapping light pattern. A third person to my right joins the conversation, her footlights blending with theirs. I am seeing this. They do not.
Of the world population, billions, of the national population, millions; I witness three conscious beings. Each may experience themselves as the center of their own universe of awareness. But I am made aware of them being connected with light, creating an atmosphere bigger than any of them alone, on a scale that’s outside their conversation, a blended connectivity of golden light.
I am numb, enlightened. I breath in, realizing we are not isolated. Each a sphere of consciousness is linked to larger whole of cooperation and interplay. Seeing the glow showing us as networked is a gift. Maybe this is a once off gift. Maybe it will happen again. But I will always remember the moment.
Now, back in normal times, not experiencing the transcendental, I realize that we certainly can leave the place we’re in and the people we are with better than when we first arrived.
” We will transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.” The Athenian Oath
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