I remember watching a television show not too long ago. A young woman, adopted as an infant, was desperately seeking the identity of her birth mother.

“If only I could know who she was,” she said. “Maybe then I could finally feel whole.”

I’ve often pondered this notion of ‘wholeness’. From a Buddhist perspective, we’re taught that wholeness is attained by way of a return to our ‘one true self’. And, forged by way of an unconditional gratitude.

“The earth is neither great nor a grain of sand small,” shares Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki. “In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe.”

Indeed, to see this world without the identifier of ‘label’, is to finally understand the true depth of our interconnectedness.

In this way, we are not ever alone.

And,

In this way, we are not ever without.