You Are Not The Whole

It is not about you.

You are special, just as special as the rest of the eight billion other unique, individual lives on earth. ‘Special’ isn’t really special.

— Abiola Okun

Have you tried to pause to picture the amount of lives that have existed on this planet? The Internet says about 117 billion people have lived on Earth, and if knowledge is anything to go by, I would multiply that number by 25%.

According to Worldometer, we have 8.2 billion people alive today. Just imagine! 8.2 billion unique individuals walking and breathing the same air as you. Thinking about these numbers makes you realize how insignificant one person is to cause any real impact on the whole number. In the face of approximately 8,200,000,000 people, we would seem to be almost inconsequential, our lives would be a little less as grandiose as we always believe, and although, that might seem to be a little sad, I'll explain soon why it is good. But before then, more numbers.

This year alone, over 83 million people have died. On average daily, 385,000 babies are born and approximately 150,000 people die. If anything, it points at how easily life is created and ended. Many are here right now and suddenly aren't anymore. So many plans result in naught, and so many who lived like they would live forever breathe their last in a squash second.

Here's what the numbers looked like when I started writing this. I'm going to show you what it looks like by the time I'm done writing, just at the end.

Now I cannot categorically be sure of its accuracy, but the census has proven that the numbers are closer to reality — so it still strikes home the point.

This is good because these numbers should help us pause and reflect. How that, it's so easy to be here this minute and not here the next minute. I know, subconsciously, you want to say 'God forbid' — that's if you haven't even said it already.

The realization of this should help us realize that it would be such small-mindedness to continue to live like we'll be here for eternity, that it is all about us, that everything and everyone lives for us. If you think like that, here's an opportunity to have a mind-shift.

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You are special, don't get me wrong, but just as you're one in 8.2 billion, so are all the individuals in the 8.2 billion. If your life is one in something, it means that it is a part of that something, cannot function on its own, the story being told is not about it, and the truth is, it could have easily been anyone else.

Putting it in clear terms, other people's lives are not about you, your life isn't even about you. It is a part of a whole, and the limited time you've got must be used for the whole.

I heard something many months ago, and even though I don't remember the exact words, it goes along the lines of how your resources will be directly proportional to the limitations of your mind. $1,000,000 gives you wealth for life, or doesn't scratch the surface of what you want to do; depending on whether your life is about you, or whether you function as a part of the whole.

If you think that your life is about you, that your time is about you, that you should dictate how you want to move to please yourself, that other people should live in service of you, then the resources that will forever be availed to you will ONLY be resources to satisfy the needs of the small, fragile life that is you, and then that limits the kind of impact you would have, effectively wasting the time you should have spent being a part of the whole — and that's even if you're lucky.

If on the other hand, you see yourself as a part of the whole, you see your resources as resources to better the whole, resources that will satisfy the whole will naturally gravitate towards you.

Sadly, many people today think only about themselves. They go about living selfish lives like everything is orchestrated for them like they are the main character in this world and there is nothing bigger than them.

If that is true about them, then it can only be true about every single person who is alive on earth today. And it cannot be further from the truth because if it was, the world should end the minute you end. But we have pieces of evidence to dispute it, evidence which includes the number of people who have been birthed and who have died between the time I started writing this and now.

Your life is not just about you. The world is not just about you. You don't have enough time to spend here to make it about you. Knowing this will cause a shift in your mind so you can start thinking like a part of the whole, thinking in terms of how you can impact the whole and how you can leave a lasting fragrance that will make the whole picture a little more colorful, the whole story a little more interesting, and the whole world a little easier and better to live in.

Here are the statistics on Worldometer as at the time I finished this newsletter. See the difference? Can you spot how many have gone and how that the world keeps spinning? I hope that they fulfilled their part of the whole. And I sincerely hope this put things into a new perspective for you and takes you out of the disadvantage of thinking you are the whole.

It is not about you. You're not the whole. You are a part of the whole. Act like it today.

To Your Growth,

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired.