To gaze out from our eyes into a beautiful and complex world is to gaze upon the same thing in all directions – atoms taking on different shapes.

Separations of matter arranged such as a be a tree or a high-rise share more in common than they appear.

Each is made of just a small fraction of atomic types of much the same order.

The carbon in the cells of the tree is identical to the carbon used to forge the steel. There is no difference whatsoever.

The carbon atom itself is one of the highest bonding and abundant in the universe (on par with silica), making it the foundation of most of what we experience including our minds and bodies.

In all likelihood, everything we know on and in our world came from a single or small handful of exploding stars – including the material for our memory systems.

Knowing this deep connection exists does little for us, however. It doesn’t seem to align with why many of us feel a part.

So why do we sometimes feel separate?

It’s difficult to answer. We may never know for sure.

What we do know is we are a star that has died, then been reincarnated to learn to think and recreate itself as a sentient web and non-sentient matter.

Now, it is contemplating its own separations – billions of years after its death.