The Interconnectedness of All Things
Throughout life, nothing stays the same. Everything is in a constant state of motion and change. Most things change gradually over time, sometimes without anyone taking notice until one day we look back and realize things are different than before.
But sometimes, change happens suddenly, and in a single breath one’s whole world is different. In an instant, there is a before and an after.
I received a phone call on Thanksgiving that did just that.
When my old Army supervisor’s name flashed on my screen, my stomach dropped. There are some people that, on certain occasions, you don’t want to hear from. When I answered, I could hear the pain in his voice. Someone was dead. I knew this was the news he was about to deliver, and it hurts my heart that I can hear bad news on someone’s voice by simple experience. I braced myself while a series of names scrolled through my head, but when he told me who it was, my brain refused to believe it.
I screamed. A grief-stricken “No!” rose from the depths of my soul, and I fell to my knees with tears streaming down my face.
The night before Thanksgiving, my dear friend and honorary older sister was picking her wife up from the brewery where she worked. It was just another Wednesday night. They stopped to buy champagne for the following day’s Thanksgiving feast, which they had planned to spend with family and friends. A pair of drag racers traveling in the opposite direction put all that to an end when one of them lost control, hitting Sydny and Lorie nearly head on. The impact was so hard that the truck lost its engine. Lorie was ejected, and by some miracle walked away with non-life threatening injuries. Sydny, however, was unconscious with multiple broken bones, and by the time the fire department finally pried her out of the car, she was in critical condition. She was transported to the hospital where they managed to keep her alive on life support machines, but the prognosis was grim.
For the next several hours after receiving the news, I made phone calls to friends and old coworkers, crying and praying for a miracle. I was in a daze of disbelief and heartache. Late that night, I drove the hour and a half to Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs to see her. I’d never been in an ICU before, and my stomach was in knots at what I would see.
Sydny lay in her hospital bed, frozen in time. Machines beeped, and tubes and wires seemed to be attached to every part of her body. I held her hand in mine. It was cold and felt like rubber. Scrapes and bruises marked her face, and a huge bandage was wrapped around her head with the words “no skull” marked on one side where the doctors attempted to alleviate some of the pressure on her brain. It was a heartbreaking sight, and it was all I could do to stand there and cry.
I told her how much I loved her. I told her how much I needed her, how much her kids and wife needed her, how much the world did. It all felt like a terrible nightmare that we would eventually wake up from. None of it felt real. My brain couldn’t grasp the reality that was before it, despite the sights and sounds that proved it to be true. I desperately wanted to have hope for a miracle, but in my hearts of hearts, I knew Sydny was gone. I kissed her forehead before leaving the hospital, knowing it would be the last time I saw her.
She peacefully passed just a few days later on Sunday, November 27th.
Grief is heavy and strange. Even when the reality of the situation doesn’t feel real, the grief does. For several days, I lay awake far into the night, unable to sleep because every time I closed my eyes I saw Sydny. Every morning when I awoke and slowly realized which reality I was in, I sobbed into my pillow, incapable of doing anything else. Her voice in my head was so loud, especially those first few days, and I could hear her laugh clear as crystal ringing in my ears. Even in my grief, I was able to laugh at the jokes she was telling me from her new place in the cosmos, beyond this physical dimension of our reality.
It terrifies me to think about all the years I may live without her, knowing that memory fades as time passes. I dread the day I can no longer hear her voice or laugh, or see her big smile in my mind’s eye. Throughout the several days following her death, I spent a lot of time with friends and Sydny’s family, many of whom I’d never met before. To try and measure the impact Sydny had in this life would be an entirely futile attempt, for it is immeasurable. She was a truly special person who had no idea just how special she was. We spent so many days relishing in our memories of her, telling stories, laughing and crying all at once. It was just as therapeutic as it was exhausting. I was grateful for the opportunity to speak at her memorial service, and at least try to give her the justice she deserved. Though, if I’m being honest, there aren’t enough words to capture everything that she was, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to do so as I share her memory and spirit with those in my own life, now and in the years to come.
It’s been a couple of weeks since Sydny left this world. I can feel her encouraging me to move forward with my life and all its endeavors. She’d want me to, just as she’d want everyone else to, but it’s terribly difficult to pick up the pieces of oneself after losing someone so significant and attempt to carry on as one did before.
Actually, it’s impossible, because now is different than before, and it always will be. We can never carry on just like we did, because everything has changed. Trying to settle into this new era of life without my older sister by my side has been a whirlwind mixture of both determination and depression. I hate that the world doesn’t pause for you in situations like this. The most horrifying circumstances don’t stop the earth from rotating and revolving, nor do they stop the movement of the tides or clouds. Everything just continues all around you, even when you have no idea what continuing looks like for you.
I hit the slopes for the first time this season yesterday, which was spiritually uplifting in spite of things. On the way home, I sank into the backseat and let my eyelids close. As we approached our exit off I-70, I heard my brother in the passenger seat gasp and yell something. I snapped to attention, and my eyes found the source of surprise. A sedan-sized vehicle was airborne, flipping onto its side before sliding across all three lanes and dragging another car with it. Apparently he had tried to merge at a speed too fast for safety, which started a chain reaction of cars hitting cars before he lost total control. My brother was the first to run to the vehicles, with me and a few others following close behind. The driver who seemed to be at fault was able to exit his car through the trunk. He was completely shell-shocked, shaking and crying but otherwise he seemed to be okay. After the adrenaline wore off and we realized everyone was more or less unharmed, Adam and I walked back to our car while several other people clamored about trying to find ways to be useful to the situation.
I felt my whole body get hot, and an uncontrollable anger rose from chest.
“DUDE!” I screamed to no one in particular, “Colorado has the worst FUCKING DRIVERS!!!” I punched the air and stifled further screams of intense anger.
If the driver was in any state to hear my words, he would’ve heard them. It wasn’t very loving or compassionate of me, and I immediately felt remorse for losing my cool and screaming my anger into the world. But the truth is, I couldn’t help it. As I watched that car flip onto its side and slide across the highway, the very first thing that came to my mind was Sydny. I yelled from a place of anger and hurt still very much in the process of healing, and despite that I have no exact idea what happened to cause such a crash as this, I knew it was because someone was making poor and careless decisions. Or, at the very least, was not paying attention to the world around him. Later, I saw an article about a crash on I-25 near Broomfield yesterday morning that left one person dead, and my heart grew heavy knowing exactly the kind of grief that family is feeling today.
Such is the nature of all the world’s problems: carelessness for the other.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with drivers in this state, but I pass an accident almost every single day, without fail. And you know what? I’m FUCKING SICK OF IT. I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be perfect (that is a laughable prospect), but I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I don’t understand that my actions have consequences in the world.
Here’s the thing: you are not an individual, nor are you separate from the world around you. Everything is connected to everything else; this is the true nature of the world and the universe. It is impossible to live your life in such a way that has no effect on the world or people around you, and until you grasp this understanding in its entirety, you will never make the world a better place.
I came across something yesterday that said, “When people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small, but barely anyone in the present really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small.”
Our actions in the present determine the future. Not just our future, but the futures of others, too. Because that guy did whatever he was doing to cause yesterday’s crash, multiple people are shaken and shocked, without drivable vehicles that they probably need, and hundreds were undoubtedly stuck in hours of I-70 traffic. Because someone chose to drink and drive in the early hours of yesterday morning, a family is without a loved one. Because someone chose to drag race on Powers Boulevard the night of November 23rd, a family is without a mother and a wife, and countless others are without their beloved friend Sydny Johnson.
We live in a co-created reality. Our own morals and the decisions we make because of them create our reality and the reality beyond ourselves. We cannot expect to live in a good world if we are not good ourselves. We cannot expect to live in a world at peace if we do not have peace ourselves. The system of the world is good or bad because of the people of the world. After all, what really is the system except the people who comprise it?
This lesson goes far beyond driving cars (although that seems to be a pretty serious theme right now). It’s crazy how much we take for granted, including our own lives and the lives of others.
Around this time a year ago, someone asked me what I would do if I knew I had only seven days to live. Who would I have dinner with? Who would I have one last dance with, or one last kiss? I’ve thought about this question a lot since then, and although some of my specific answers have changed, my overall motive in such a situation remains unchanged: to love, and to love hard.
For love is the very meaning of life.
I know I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it a million more if it means I can help the world understand what’s really important in this crazy thing we call existence.
On behalf of Sydny and all those we’ve loved and lost, my message to you today is to think about your place in the world. What do you give? How do you live? Do you make the world better by mere virtue of you being in it? Do you love and forgive? Do you hold compassion, or do you hold hatred and fear?
We do not live in a world made of separate things. This is the greatest illusion of life, and it takes serious commitment every day to understand and embrace the interconnectedness of all things. It is the truth that the Buddha told, the truth that Jesus died for, and the truth that will liberate the world if taken seriously by everyone. There is nothing outside of this infinite universe, and every point of consciousness — that is, every living creature on earth — calls the very universe into being. When someone dies, a whole universe is lost, and countless others are forever changed.
Today, I implore you to think seriously about the world, the universe, and all of its inhabitants. There is no higher cosmic order that makes things happen for a reason. You make things happen. Your actions today determine the world of tomorrow. I intend for nothing else in my life except to be the best version of myself I can be; to look out for others, to help when help is needed, to give to those who need it, and to help guide those who misunderstand.
“That was heavy,” my brother said from the passenger seat as we made our way home after the accident.
“Imagine how heavy it would be if someone was killed,” I returned.
He nodded in silent agreement, and we sat in our post-adrenaline shock, still reeling from what we witnessed. I said a few prayers for all those involved, wishing for nothing but goodness and healing for all those affected, including, and perhaps especially, the driver at fault.
We determine what kind of world we live in. It is a mistake to think that we do not affect the goodness or the badness of the world. It is true that sometimes bad things just happen, for we cannot have the good if we do not have the bad. But it is not true that our actions are outside of our control, nor is it true that we do not change the world for better or worse in our day to day actions.
The world will only become better if we become better ourselves.
I beg of you, from one human being to another, to strive for the best version of yourself. This, and only this, will create the best version of the world for everyone.
