|
Echo Beach Tide Pools
The World Revolves Around Me!
By Keith Alan Johnson
02-05-2000
There is a song that Sting put out some years ago called "Message
in a Bottle". It's about someone comparing his loneliness
to being lost on a desert island and how he throws a single message
in a bottle out to sea. The song ends with him surprised to find
a hundred million bottles washed up on the beach.
I think we are all kind of like those bottles. We are not necessarily
lonely, a bottle is clear after all; rather we have our individual
way that we look at, and react to, the world around us. Our "way"
is as set as paper, which is to say it can vary quite easily.
It may seem odd that I would tie this in with the crash of Alaska
Airlines 261, but as I watch the reactions of the various people
around me, and even observe my own reaction, this song, and those
bottles come to mind. All of our individual reactions come from
how we see this disaster affecting each of us personally. There
is quite a bit of soul searching and introspection that a lot
of us are going through. Some of us have sympathy for those who
have lost loved ones. Some of us have empathy and actually feel
the pain even though we haven't been affected directly. A few
of us are strongly affected by the loss of someone we knew on
the flight, an emotion that certainly can't be bottled. Because
I work in a business that has close ties to Alaska I frequently
choose Alaska Airlines when I fly. I have affection for the smiling
Eskimo logo as I would a stuffed toy. I've given it a personality.
So I'm saddened when I see the smiling Eskimo on the news with
the word "Crash" underneath it. Someone on the east
coast sees it as simply another tragic airline disaster. Each
of us are affected by how we relate it to our own experience.
When we are born, the world revolves around us. Everything that
happens, happens to us personally. We get hugged because we need
it. Food is placed before us because we need it. Everything happens
to us because we can't do it ourselves. People react to us, and
as near as we can tell, we haven't done anything to cause that
reaction. So we figure in our infant minds that if someone is
happy, we did that. If someone is sad or angry, it must be that
we are responsible. Later, when we learn to talk, we expect to
be heard and are frustrated when we are not. That's why children
have a hard time learning about the proper way to interrupt.
Slowly we learn that the world doesn't happen to us or because
of us. It just happens. But I don't think we ever completely
lose that bit of selfishness. We've started writing our message
for a bottle. We are always comparing other people's emotions
to our own life experiences, looking for a similar feeling perhaps
to try to understand what the other person is feeling. Maybe
we want to help them feel better by sharing our message. Or maybe
we don't understand why the other person is affected so deeply.
We are always seeking an answer to the question "How does
this event, or that person's reaction, affect me"? or "How
do I affect them"?
Whether we are feeling an event as a personal experience, or
reaching out to others, we are casting our bottles out to sea
saying, "I'm here. This is me." Every day we change
a little and perhaps we throw out a new bottle. Everyone else
is casting their bottles out to sea saying, "Well, here.
This is me." Not all of the notes in the bottles will affect
us. The only way we will find out how we will react is if we
open a bottle and read the note...
...or the essay.
02-05-2000
<<<Previous Essay / Next Essay>>> |