Apple Peel Lesson

I was cutting up an apple for breakfast, and I got to thinking about the idea of peeling.

“Where, exactly does the peel end,” I wondered?

I thought back to experiences I have had peeling apples, and it occurred to me that it really doesn't. There are spots where there is more or less peel, but the idea of a point at which the peel ends is an illusion. The peel and every other “part” of the apple slowly transitions from one to the other. Even the seeds are attached though a sort of stem that transition from seed to core.

The same is true for the boundaries that separate us; state from state, country from country, continent from continent, people from people. There is no tangible point at which the river that separates New Hampshire from Maine becomes New Hampshire water and no longer Maine water. It is all water commingling at the shore with the land obscuring the boundary even further.

And it is true for us. The popularity of DNA testing is revealing how intermingled we are with each other. The choice to see myself otherwise is just that; a choice. I can choose to see myself as Apple or peel, but ultimately, both are aspects of the other, and in that way inseparably connected.

Today, I choose to see myself as me and Apple and Earth and Sky, and enjoy what is made possible as a result.