From pencils to people: a meditation

Gratitude for the everything and everyone we each contain

It’s not just the band. The band, the crowd, the venue all co-create the concert.

My friend Shelly introduced me to the pencil meditation. Hold a pencil: a deceptively simple object. Contemplate the people who brought that pencil to you . . .

. . . The lumberjacks who chopped down the tree to make the wood for the pencil. The people who own the forest or convey the rights for the chopping. Those who planted the trees years ago. The truckdrivers who conveyed the wood to a factory for refinement. The workers at the fuel company who transported the fuel used by the truck. The owners and employees of the gas station where the truck refueled . . ..

At least thousands of people came together, all around the world, to bring you that pencil. Somehow after all that work, it costs only a quarter.

A LEGO pencil at a pencil art exhibit in Boston. Think of all that went into making each LEGO . . .

The same is true for people

We are each unavoidably the product of thousands of people.

We see the world differently because of people we know and many people we do not know.

Growing up in New England, I saw many historic homes. My wife Vanessa Fazio, Esq. loved the look, the feel of Victorian homes in particular, and loved the idea of living in an older home. I saw the homes around me more vividly when I saw them through her eyes.

When I was a child, my father said the Beatles were not anything too special; they were just extremely popular (do not tell Vanessa). With little other information, I too had dismissed them.

When Vanessa and I started dating, she told me the Beatles were one of three of her major loves.

I was not converted right away. However, as I listened more, I discovered their later music like The White Album really was something special.

Vanessa increased my appreciation for older homes

Minor and major

My sister and her husband have introduced me to some really good Vermont cheese.

They also tithe and introduced me to a much more generous approach to charitable giving (I still aspire to be that charitable — not quite there).

My friend Steve saw the talent in James Austin Johnson on my favorites show: Saturday Night Live (the then almost-forbidden, too late show my sister and Aunt Rita made cool for me in childhood). I better recognized Johnson’s talent because of Steve.

Steve and his wife Chrissy also introduced me to my job.

I am passionate about this work of increasing joy because my sister left a ‘Teen Magazine on the counter when I was a child, because generations of leaders before me had a philosophy of place-based work and generations of community activists embraced it, and passionate about our early childhood work because I once saw a chart about the devastating impact of American underinvestment in early childhood (I do not know the author).

Another chart confirming our need to invest more in early education and care

Around the world

Vanessa loved the Beatles because her Aunt Maureen and her parents loved the Beatles.

As her father will tell you, Vanessa and I met because he went to Boston College and encouraged her to do the same. Her mom also had given her some past love advice. Her friend Sandy also had interned with me and encouraged Vanessa to do the same.

My sister and her husband learned about tithing from their church, continuing an ancient tradition informed by people now long deceased.

We are each the product of . . .

It has been said you are the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time.

In truth, we are a weighted average of the full world. Perhaps 40, 50, or 75% is the average of those five. But also averaged in there, a little bit, is the kind bus driver who waits while you run up the street, the crotchety, wryly smiling CVS employee who says you would be better off shopping somewhere else, the author of the book on your nightstand whom you have never met, and your neighbor’s dog who is surprisingly happy to see you.

All those people in us are a similar weighted average.

“When all give, all gain.” East Boston Social Centers has always recognized how we are community. From East Boston Social Centers archives and Kyle Ingrid Johnson.

Humility in this interwoven reality

In moments when we feel truly enlightened, in moments when we think others are not, can we find some humility in this realization?

There is some happy accident of fate in the people and views we encounter and incorporate. How might our views be different if different people were differently weighted in the equation of us?

As our composition shifts over time, how are we different than we once were? How will we change again?

How does this apply too to those with whom we disagree?

Gratitude for everyone

Can this awareness of our composition increase gratitude for everyone? The idiosyncratic cousin who taught another beloved relative to have more patience. The person who cut you off in traffic and also works at your favorite pizza place. The neighbor who holds a completely different politics from you who also shoveled your driveway while you were away.

Perhaps you are thinking, “some people just make other people worse. Some people in my life could be even better were it not for . . .” or even, “I would be a better person if I did not have to deal with . . ..”

But we can never really know. Life is full of unintended and unexpected consequences.

Even as we seek to improve, even as we hope for better, we can find gratitude for this moment, for these people, for ourselves, for this world.

We are all miraculous.

Celebrate your multitudes and stay joyful Eastie!

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