The American poet Walt Whitman has been haunting me lately.
Everywhere I go, I seem to be running into the most famous quote from his Song of Myself, from the collection Leaves of Grass.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
The context varies – a new book by the physician Gabor Maté, a comment by a friend at a queer yeshiva, an article in my local newspaper. It seems to be in the air, a reminder to all of us in this fraught time, when people seem to be contracting themselves into tiny little islands of fear.
Humans have a very deep need for community and connection, but we seem to be sinking deeper into our silos. Our ability to listen to each other and, more importantly, care about and for each other, seems to be at a low ebb. Over 2.5 years of pandemic isolation and rising anger and fear are not helping, of course, but humans have faced plagues before. Of course, we weren’t undergoing late stage capitalism at that time, so maybe communities were more close-knit and took better care of each other, despite not having vaccines and antibiotics and all the wonders of modern medicine.
Pondering what Whitman might have meant by this cryptic statement, I am reminded of our foremother Rebecca, who was pregnant with twins, and cried out, “If so, why then am I?”. When she went to inquire of G-d, she was told that she had two nations within her. Truly she contained multitudes, as her babies became the progenitors of nations – Esau of the Edomites (later identified with the Romans in Jewish tradition), and Jacob of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Extending this idea backwards to our very beginnings, to the world which brought us forth, it is clear that we are one, and yet we contain multitudes. There are currently 8 billion of us on this little blue marble, and yet we are all related to each other, all one species. How can anyone indulge in racism, ageism, ableism, antisemitism, cissexism, or any other kind of -ism when we realise that we are one? It makes no sense.
Rebecca’s twins fought for control and domination of each other – maybe it’s time for us to move on from that model of scarcity – of a world where their father had only one blessing to bestow. We live in a world with an infinity of blessings, if we will only accept them and share them with one another. Life is not a zero sum game, and there is enough for everybody.
It’s important to remember that the true measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. This quote has been attributed to a number of people, most often to Mahatma Gandhi. Regardless of who originated it, it is true, and the society we have here in the West is definitely not living up to that measure. Time to do better.
I’d love to know what you think – does this make sense to you? Let me know!