Walking on the Sun

If you and I were to hike around the perimeter of the Sun,
Covering thirty miles a day,
It would take us 250 years;
By the time we returned to our starting point,
Everything would have changed.
We can never really know the Sun.

A photographer out on the sea
Records only fragmentary glimpses.
Observing his photos, he might imagine that he knows the ocean,
But that would be foolish:
It is too vast.

With a powerful enough microscope,
You could spend your whole life
Studying a single dust mite
And never be finished.
Even the tiniest things are too big for us.

The brain collects snapshots of the self,
Which it tapes together,
And declares, “This is me!”
It isn’t.

Our mind cannot fully apprehend itself—
It is too small,
And too big!
We are bigger than the Sun,
Bigger than the ocean.
We are infinite.
You can never know yourself
Because you are too big for yourself.
The oracle lied.

It’s well known that we only experience reality indirectly,
As our consciousness recreates it.
Go to the Grand Canyon and what do you see?
Only you.
Look up at the night sky—
That’s you out there.
Under that microscope—
More of you than you could ever explore.
The Sun?
You too, every mile of it.

The smell of fresh bread,
The taste of honey,
The softness of cotton,
The notes of the scale,
The colors of the rainbow,
Are all you—
The legacy of millions of years of evolution.

Just as you can never see anything on TV except the TV’s own light,
You can never experience anything in your mind except the activity of that same mind.

Yet, we intersect with others,
Whose senses derive from the same origins.
On different screens,
We can all watch the same events;
In different minds,
We all see the same stars.
Your Sun is my Sun.
The waters of mighty oceans mingle.

We can never know ourselves,
But we can spark others,
Who are also infinite,
Igniting flames of mutual recognition and celebration.