RDB4

As I am sitting here in my bed, trying to write this RDB, I am struggling with writing anything let alone writing a coherent body of thought. This struggle could be due to the fact that I just ate my bodyweight in candy or that I am addicted to Facebook or that today I seem to be the person to call randomly. Although I would like to believe that all of these things are mere coincidences, I now realize that this is not true in the least. As Alan Watts states, “just as no thing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own” (187). Since my surrounding circumstances have influenced me, I have recognized that we are one in the same and that everything around me seems to be connected through some intricate web of unity.

We have been taught for years that “the world is made up or composed of separate bits or things” (Watts 181). Although this may be true from a scientific perspective, all of these separates do not function without the others. What would a football team be without its quarterback or the human body be without the heart?
((The human heart is connected to the entire circulatory system of the body. Without the heart pumping blood to the rest of the organs, we would die.))

Such things are merely microcosms of the bigger picture, of the world as a whole but accurately demonstrate the importance of being an integrated body. As Daniel Goleman states, everything and everyone is “closely intertwined with a dynamic relationship among them” (30). Even though we may not see it, this relationship is there and will be there long after we are gone.

People in the world today generally seek personal glory over the success of the masses. Although we are supposed to be united as “one nation under God”, the human race has taken on the mindset of every man for himself. For example, Doctors have started to believe that they do not need nurses while in all actuality it is the nurses who know most about a patient’s care regimen. Doctors and nurses are dependent on each other and must interact amicably in order to successfully perform their jobs. ((Nurse and Doctor working together to cure a patient))

As cooperation is needed the previous examples, so it is needed in about every other aspect of life. This “failure (of individuals) to see that…people, nations, animals, insects, and plants do not exist in or by themselves” is what hinders the world from revolving without conflict and obstructs us from living as a integrated people (Watts182).

Gerard Manley Hopkins states that “each mortal thing does one thing in the same” (906). Every person has hopes, dreams, ambitions, and fears. “This knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men” (Watts 192). Not only are we all connected through these essential qualities of a human being, but we are also connected to each other and the world around us through life itself. We must fuse together our lives with the lives of those surrounding us in order to live the fullest life possible. In the famous words of E.M. Forester, we must “only connect!” and we will “live in fragments no longer.”

((E.T. and Elliot "connecting"))