We often hear people say, “When I came into this world,” or “When my child came into this world.” It sounds harmless, even poetic, but there’s something subtly off about it. That phrasing suggests separation, as if a person arrives from somewhere else and drops into existence like a visitor. But what if that’s not what’s really happening at all?
What if we don’t come into the world, but come from it?
Seen this way, a human being isn’t an outsider entering reality. A child isn’t a stranger arriving on Earth. They’re an expression of the Earth itself, the same way a wave is an expression of the ocean. The wave isn’t separate from the water, it’s something the water is doing for a moment. In the same sense, a person is something the universe is doing, right here, right now.
Trees don’t “come into” a forest. Leaves don’t arrive from elsewhere. They grow out of the same living system that sustains them. The soil, the rain, the sunlight, and time itself all collaborate to produce a leaf. Humans aren’t exempt from that process. We’re made of the same elements, shaped by the same forces, and sustained by the same networks of interdependence.
When you look at it this way, individuality doesn’t disappear, but it softens. You’re still you, with your own experiences, personality, and story. But underneath that, there’s a deeper continuity. Your breath is borrowed from the trees. Your body is recycled stardust. Your thoughts arise from a nervous system that evolved through millions of years of life responding to life.
This perspective changes how separation feels. The line between “me” and “the world” becomes thinner, more permeable. Harm done to the environment isn’t happening to something external; it’s happening to the larger system that expresses itself as us. Care, compassion, and responsibility stop being moral obligations and start feeling like natural responses.
It’s a quiet but profound shift. You’re not a visitor here. Your children aren’t visitors either. They are the world, unfolding in human form, just as waves unfold on the surface of the sea. And when you see it that way, existence feels less lonely, less fragmented, and a lot more meaningful.