[2021-05-09—23:32]
We are all bound to each other; no one is truly isolated (even when alone) as we arose from one of our own, were raised and taught by others, and have a place in the vast interconnection of life on this planet, to the point that we carry some of this life – distinct from ourselves, but interdependent – with us wherever we go—even if where we go is to leave the Earth.
Life begat us, we consume life – or the formerly living – and when we die we eventually become part of other life.
For people, this interconnectedness and this binding, reciprocal influence on each other has been made all the more clear in the past year, highlighting the essential roles played by many who have long been all but forgotten and ignored—until the need that arises from their absence is felt. These are the assumed jobs, the ordinary but vital works done everywhere around the world. These are the efforts at continuing and maintaining our connection, our comforts, our sustenance, and our very lives.
It is remarkable how many people are required to keep the essentials of life ready, safe, and available to the rest of us that work in more pleasant, more entertaining, more interesting, or more important-seeming jobs and professions.
And on this day it is most appropriate to include in this group those thankless, selfless laborers who taught and guided and protected each of us from birth into adulthood, and often beyond.
This is not to say that only mothers deserve recognition, that all mothers deserve the same degree of praise, or that the role of mother must be so narrowly defined as it long has been.
It is, however, to say that in the fabric that binds humanity together, mothers are the warp around which the weft of society is woven.
It is together we are whole, but it is from and around them that life arises and is entwined.
[23:57]
