Infinity in the Palm of My Hand

Note: The following appeared in the January-February, 2013 issue of Neighbors of Batavia magazine.
 

I have read many books in my life, and always viewed the time spent dwelling in the pages as no more than a conversation between me and the author. I have been wondering recently, however, how those moments are made possible by far more than just two individuals. How much more remains a great mystery.

No author can arrange words into meaningful thoughts without the voices of teachers breathing their influence into the subtleties of the wisdom. The teachers in my life not only held up a candle to illuminate new ways to understand the world, but also held up a mirror to enable me to see something within to which I might have been blind; given me the gift of self-understanding. As I read, it is stunning to consider the thousands of voices speaking through every thought as an author sits at a keyboard or with pen in hand; the author, midwife to wisdom inspired by those who have come before and articulated through the author’s unique life and experiences.

And reader, it’s useful to remember that I comprehend the world through unique lenses life has given me. Those lenses, too, have been ground and tinted by thousands who have helped me birth the language of my life. I see through a grandmother who gave me unconditional love; a Math teacher who helped me learn about learning; a thirteen year-old on the suicide hotline desperate for words of comfort and reassurance; a wife who remains my most loving and helpful critic; teens at Operation Snowball who have helped me peer into my blindness; the homeless and disabled who teach me the limits of my ability to come to their aid. The list goes on and on. With each new experience, the language of my life becomes more complex and nuanced, and I understand others in new ways.

But the moment of meeting between me and an author is not limited to the thousands of voices that speak through them and those that shaped the language through which I listen. The book itself could not exist without hundreds who felled trees, turned them into pulp and paper, and those who carefully printed and bound the pages. There were those who critiqued, edited and refined the author’s ideas, and thousands who distributed the volume to warehouses, booksellers and eventually to the hands that cradle and read.

But it is short-sighted to suggest that this moment of meeting contains only the wisdom and efforts of humanity. What of the miracles of nature that preceded them? What of the fibers and ink used to reveal the words, thoughts and wisdom. The fibers emerged when raindrops from the heavens and a beam of light from a star collided with seeds buried in the Earth to create new life. If the inks are oil-based, the molecules you touch as you turn the pages could literally be from mammals that lived millions of years ago.

And finally, take a moment to look at your hand. Each molecule you see, and each one you touch on every page, were, billions of years ago, part of an ancient star that exploded, coalesced into the Earth and became the trees, inks and humans that made a moment of meeting between author and reader a reality.

William Blake once wrote, “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.” What you might have thought, moments ago, to be simply a community magazine, you might now see as infinity in the palm of your hand.

As I am gifted with one more new year in my life, I hope to see more of the moments of 2013 as infinity in the palm of my hand. And to know that, as many ancient traditions suggest, if we listen carefully…and perceive deeply…each moment contains much, if not the entirety, of the Universe.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *