My mind is easily attracted to passing dangers, but I might not notice the greatest danger of all. I take care when I step out of the shower lest I slip on a floor lightly splattered by errant water. I take my time descending the stars, focused on the banister in case I should need it. I pull back as I begin sliding out of my car in to the street as a vehicle flashes by just outside my car’s door.
While I pay attention to these passing dangers, it is easy to ignore a greater danger. There is a danger that I might never be aware of what it is really like to be alive, to thrive as a human, to enter into another day of existence.
If I were to become truly aware, it would be for me to enter into a deep understanding of how I function. For me, this means being attentive to my mind and observing how I react to the world around me and inside me.
I have some awareness of my solitary self, and that is part of my insight into what it means to be human. There is another aspect that is also important for not to miss. I want to be deeply aware of how I relate to the world around me. How do I fit into that vast realm of limitless possibilities.
I think I have a danger of not paying attention to how I am related to other humans who are dealing with this same vast mystery, maybe as inattentively as I. There is a danger that I might not fully grasp how I am related to all other humans struggling to understand just as I struggle.
The friends who sit with me on my deck, the kids visiting the fish in my back yard, the passers-by who are chatting with one another in their own small realm. I am related to them all, and there is a great danger that I might live with little awareness of how we collectively are part of the vast mystery.
I seem alert to so many life’s dangers. The radio voices and the printed news remind me routinely of the vast dangers surrounding me. The real danger is that I might never become fully aware of how we all fit together in a vast wholeness, that I might never understand how we are intimately connected.
There is a danger I might not fully see my connection not only to the flowers that bloom in my yard, but also how I am connected to all those other humans who see those same blooms. There is a danger of not living in that realized connection.