What does the world mean to you?

Much to think about today in Mary Oliver’s October, including this tricky little question:

“What does the world mean to you if you can’t trust it to go on shining when you’re not there?”

On the one hand I have the ability to think that the world will do just fine without me.  (There is, after all, empirical proof of that since it did okay for a few years before me, and I have seen it continue to function as some depart.)  On the other hand (there always seems to be another) I worry about how the hell things can possibly function without me. (Okay, hubris and hyperbole, but still, I think you get the point.  I worry.)

Of course the world with “go on shining” when I am not.  All the more reason, as if one needed it, to focus less on “me” and more on “the world.”