In Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness, he has a list of exercises to increase awareness of the present moment and to be more mindful. I thought of a version that worked well for me to realize that we are all interconnected.

Have a seat, and let’s begin, shall we? First, calmly take a few breaths and try to think of yourself sitting there. Now, pick your nose and fling a booger across the room…

Now, part of you is sitting there, and part of you is on the carpet a few feet away. That’s right, you are in two places at the same time. Go ahead, flick another lil’ bugger. Now you are in three places. If you need to take a moment and finish cleaning out your nose, I’ll wait.

All done? Great. Let’s continue…

Contemplate that you are just not scattered around your room, but you have a fairly substantial collection of fingernail clippings around the house and in the landfill across town.

Not only that, but you are also lining the pipes leaving your house all the way down the sewer to the water treatment plant. Think about how you are fertilizing the trees, and part of you is actually embedded in those apples that your neighbor is eating right now.

Yes, you and your filthy neighbor with the barking dogs are one. The cows, pigs, chicken, fish and the worm in that apple are all part of you (well, at least part of that worm is)… and you in them.

How can we be separate when we are swapping bodily fluids and other materials?

Many of us like to think how much better we are than the stupid chicken who wasn’t smart enough not to end up roasted and on our plates. But our genetic makeup is so very similar, that we are essentially the same. Just one had a beak and the other could be stupid.

How can someone swindle that client when the two of you were passing molecules back and forth through the air? Yes, let’s return to the breath, and think of how the air that you are breathing has been inside the lungs and have been part of millions of humans and other creatures.

We share so much … the earth, sky, language, culture, thoughts, genetic blueprints and even the same molecules. We are all interconnected.

PS: Hats off to you if you could do this exercise while maintaining only the half-smile.