This morning, Rabbi Miriam Lorie joined BBC Radio 2's Pause for thought.
Full script as follows:
One of the most mind-opening things anyone ever said to me was the words
“you are an entire world”.
It was in the context of a friend suggesting I do something, based on what they knew of me.
“But”, they qualified, “you are an entire world - so your actual perspective might be more complicated”.
Having another person acknowledge how complex and huge I am inside was… seriously affirming and has stayed with me ever since.
My own Jewish texts say that anyone who destroys one life - it is as if they destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life - it is as if they saved an entire world. I’d always thought of this in terms of future generations who could come from that person, just as we believe that the whole world started from one human, Adam. But with this new lens, the entire world is within each of us right now.
Over 100 years ago, the American poet Walt Witman put it slightly differently with the words,
“I am large, I contain multitudes”.
And Bob Dylan borrowed these words, singing right here in London, just two months ago (in his incredible gravelly voice):
“I'm a man of contradictions, I'm a man of many moods
I contain multitudes”
It’s true! Most of us have around 40 thoughts per minute, we have feelings and memories, and personalities and contradictions and ideas and skills and… each of us really is a whole world.
And I wonder, what if I started each day with this affirmation about myself, honouring the vastness and value within?
And what if I had this phrase in mind each time I encounter someone else? If each time I was tempted to reduce someone to a simple, dismissive characteristic, I stopped and saw them as a whole world?
I think we’d all be a lot kinder to ourselves and kinder to other people if we walked around with world glasses on. And once in a while, like my friend, we could even tell someone else the words “you are an entire world”.
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