In the last couple weeks, a journalist was beheaded in Syria, a family home was torn to pieces by mortar shells in Eastern Ukraine, a woman in New York finally became pregnant after years of trying and a star exploded in the Andromeda galaxy.

And you probably took a test or something.

How can we have nightmarish torture scenes like the crucifictions of human beings in Raqqa existing at the same time as clicker-quizzes in the Scale-Up room? How does the sensation of a man feeling his spine being sawed apart happen at the same time as that annoyed feeling you got this week when some oblivious freshmen girls cut in front of your car on University Ave.?

It seems the only thing these events have in common is the fact that they exist. Is that weird?

As a student of ecology, I’m encouraged to see the connections between organisms and their environment in every class I take. But you don’t need to be a scientist or a theologian to see there’s literally no separation between “us” and “the world.”

Seriously, how are you even reading this? Were you responsible for the development of your eyes? Do you know how you’re having your thoughts? Do you really feel like the voice in your head you call “you” is made differently or with a different motive than are the meanders in the coulee?

The only thing telling us we’re separate from the swirling, cosmic craziness that is reality is ourselves.

Smart people look at an atom and think, “There’s a positive part and a negative part, and they repel and attract each other in certain, measurable ways; it makes sense to me.”

But “positive” and “negative” are just words we use to describe their behavior so we can talk about it. Remove the labels, and you’re looking at the most inexplicable, spontaneous, unhuman-like piece of reality imaginable — and that’s what makes up every inch of “human culture.”

I’m not putting down humans to the level of barbaric, random electron collisions. I’m raising all of that up to show you that anything that is is as beautiful, outstanding and worth your time as what you have rattling around in your head today. Think about it long enough, and you’ll see that all that is is you.

We see with our eyes, but we never see what’s behind them; we experience life through our bodies, but we never actively feel the whole thing.

A blind man knows the rest of him is alive; “the rest” of a dead man goes on as it always had, too.

The late philosopher Alan Watts — a cult hero reanimated in thousands of user-made Youtube videos today — often said the delusion of separation our society is under is infinitely more treacherous and misinformed than what any amount of LSD or psilocybin mushroom could produce.

“We all know very well that after other people die, other people are born,” he wrote. “You are all of them. And when they come into being, that’s you coming into being.”

It doesn’t feel like it, I know. You don’t actively feel their human sensations day-to-day.

But that’s okay, because you are not a human — you’re the whole Is-ness, going along. You’re just fine with not feeling your bones grow; why is that a part of “you” and not the rest?

Will Beaton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].