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Shakespeare’s Breath
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?
-- Hamlet, Act II scene 2
Our Day of Recognition is the day set aside for us to contemplate the truth that each of us is "an individual expression of the Force in human form. . . . beings of both matter and spirit". On this day, we are called to honor the bonds between us all, and between us and all life, and to recognize how inestimably precious is every single miraculous expression of the Force. It is a day for recognizing both the ephemeral and the eternal, and the paradox of how those seeming opposites can occupy the same form at the same time.
Consider first that this day falls on the vernal equinox, an occasion we associate with rebirth and renewal. Our liturgy tells us that this is also the original International Earth Day, which demarcates what Margaret Mead called, "one of humanity’s great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon."
What best symbolizes this to you, and how can you connect to that energy of renewal and rebirth? Is it the first blooms in your garden or the first birds in your favorite park? Is it the excitement of spring training or opening day for your spring sports team? Is it the people around you, shedding their winter coats and their winter doldrums in favor of pretty clothes and the excitement and promise of a new season? Whatever it is, go there now -- in person if you can, in your mind if you must. Take in the sights and sounds and smells. Feel that energy of renewal all around you.
Now I'd like to personalize this a little more. I want you to think of the person closest to you in this moment -- I don't necessarily mean proximity, although maybe that's also true, but rather the person you hold closest to your heart. Maybe it's your spouse or your partner. Maybe it's your parent or your child. Maybe it's the best friend you've known for years, or the best friend who's become that for you in scant weeks since you first met. No matter whom you select, I would like for you to consider the space they take up in your life and the form they adopt when they do it.
Have you considered what a miraculous thing that form is, what a miraculous thing is that connection you share?
When I practice this exercise, I automatically think of my wife. We celebrate our wedding anniversary in the same week as the equinox, purely by happy accident in the Force. Together we have shared a long string of endless Nows on our way to accumulating all the fifteen years worth of Nows we have spent together.
Except there is almost nothing about her that is the same as when we met. A few million neurons, some heart muscle that isn't replaced and recycled the same as all her other cells, and that's pretty much it. Everything else about her is completely different at least twice over since we met. Her skin that brings me such joy to touch, she's changed that out completely just in the past three weeks. If we went by her skin suit alone, I've kissed seventeen different Kates just since our last anniversary.
Renewal and rebirth.
And yet, there is nothing new about her at all. Virtually every atom in her body was created at the exact same instant, billions of years ago, in the same instant as virtually every atom in mine and yours, the "quintessence of dust" -- stardust, if you will -- that makes up each of us and everything else in the universe. There are, to a statistical certainty, atoms in her body right now that once also helped form the bodies of Buddha and Christ and Gandhi. When I listen to her breathe in sleep, with every breath she is exhaling molecules of oxygen that once passed through the lungs of William Shakespeare -- why not the ones that he breathed as he first spoke the words I quoted above?
And in that way, she is both ephemeral and eternal, as are the ones close to you. As are you. She has always been; she will always be.
As will the ones you love.
As will you.
