There are some excerpts from books or movies that stay with us forever. Quotes that are a constant reference in our lives; truths and statements we identify with.
A few years ago I read this in A.A.Gill's book "A.A.Gill is Away":
Travel makes for intense companionship. These are people I will probably never meet again, many of whose names I can't remember, but they live with me and I'm constantly reminded of their parallel lives stumbling alongside mine, somewhere out there over the horizon. Travel lead us to the realization that what connects us is far more astonishing and precious than what separates us. We are further apart than we think and closer than we imagine.
Recently I started reading "The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts. He writes:
This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come "out" of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves", the universe "peoples". Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
At first I did not connect the two. I just knew that both resonate with me a lot and kept on bringing those two up in conversations.
They both boil down to the same thing: interconnectedness.
Oneness in all things. We are indeed closer than we imagine. And we are all expressions of the whole realm of nature.
*Trivia: first book was suggested by a good friend years ago. The second recently by my sister. They both have the same birthday. Interconnectedness? Maybe :P