My Universe!

I recently read an excerpt of "Hyperspace" by physicist Michio Kaku and was touched. The words brought in a new perspective for the people around me, how I look at them and how they might look at me.

Kaku recounts how as a boy, he used to spend hours watching carp swim around the pond at San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden.  He tried to imagine the fishes' experience.

An excerpt:

"Living their entire lives in the shallow pond, the carp would believe that their "universe" consisted of the murky water and the lilies.  Spending most of their time foraging on the bottom of the pond, they would be only dimly aware that an alien world could exist above the surface.  The nature of my world was beyond their comprehension.  I was intrigued that I could sit only a few inches from the carp, yet be separated from them by an immense chasm.  The carp and I spent our lives in two distinct universes, never entering each other's world, yet were separated by only the tiniest barrier, the water's surface."

How does this resonate for you right now, in this moment?

For me the words had clicked something. I was going through a strange time. There was a new opportunity that I was hoping to take up in a very near future and yet there was some uncertainty as to when that would be. This and the people directly or indirectly responsible for putting me in this situation were starting to irk me a bit. I was confident about myself and was strongly focused on what lay ahead of me but I did not once stop and think of what these people around me would be perceiving about the situation. Now that I think of it, this whole scenario is probably not much different from the two distinct universes mentioned by Kaku, separated only by an invisible wall made of ideals and egos. I see myself as the person who is doing the right thing, as the person holding on to my principles and self-respect. Probably, they look at their own self in the same way. The difference is not between the persons really then. The difference is between the principles. To each his own.

But, now that I understand this, does that mean that our two universes will meet? Probably not, we would still continue to be in our own universe because that's where we belong. It's just that, I at least, like Kaku and unlike the carp, now am aware that somewhere beyond the tiny barrier, there is another universe that exists and maybe for them my world is beyond comprehension.