“We’re all just walking each other home.”

—Ram Dass

As you may or may not know, it’s part of our mission statement at Atmos to “re-enchant people with nature and our shared humanity.” While it’s often the former part of that statement that I focus on in this newsletter, I think it’s time that I write about the latter. Because if there is one thing I feel our world is aching for right now, it’s for us to find common ground.

We are living in a time when hatred and division seem to be everywhere: when once-popular artists now promote Nazism, when United States senators openly use slurs against a minority group without rebuke, and when even the mere suggestion that innocent people should not be slaughtered has been deemed controversial. Politics were once separated by beliefs in the role of government; now party lines seem to cut through our very humanity.

Every day that I wake up to a new executive order or declaration meant to strip trans people of our dignity and rights, I want to rage. I want to wield my pen like a sword, spill the ink like blood. I’m not saying that isn’t warranted or that there isn’t a time for that. But I also know that’s exactly what this administration wants: more division. And I question where that leads us, to meet violence with violence. If you want to dehumanize me, then I will show you humanity. 

I don’t believe that little more than half the country wanted this level of vitriol and humiliation levied at less than 1% of the population. Over the last few weeks, I have seen more people speaking out publicly as well as reaching out to me privately voicing their love and support than I have in my entire life—including people whose paths I crossed only briefly. In moments when I have wondered about a path forward, I think of the viral video of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde pleading to President Trump to have mercy on those he is targeting, human to human.

We need to learn how to meet one another again in that place, to have compassionate dialogue regardless of politics. I’m not sure when human and planetary well-being became partisan issues, but they shouldn’t be. We need to arrive at a place of moral clarity where we can all agree on certain fundamentals: that it is wrong to persecute a group of people simply because they are different from you, as it is wrong to disparage our planet and rob generations of their futures.

Years ago when I was studying yoga and meditation, I came across Ram Dass’s adage: “We’re all just walking each other home.” It has since become a mantra that I live by, much as I often wrestle with it. To me, it means: Though our paths may look different, however briefly they might intersect, we are all on the same journey of being human. And perhaps harder to integrate: Everyone we meet along the way, in one form or another, is a guide. That does not mean that we must walk hand in hand with them, but we can still practice compassion and empathy.

We are all human, living and dying by every act of cruelty and kindness, all traveling to the same destination. And while the path we walk is not entirely up to us, how we walk it is—the traces we leave behind, who walks beside us, and how we treat them. If I can reach the end of that journey, the place where my river meets the sea, and know that I did so holding onto my humanity, then I will greet the water’s edge knowing that it was a life well-lived.