Waking up to discover who we are

Subject: Waking to discover who we are.

One of the advantages of disrupted sleep, not insomnia but sleep which is broken in the early hours of the morning, is that the mind emerges from the tunnel into a cacophony of thoughts stimulated by the excitement of over stimulated synapses. The question is, do those thoughts turn inward and dwell on your own situation, good or bad, or do you find threads to think about things outside your own personal box.
The world is full of pathos as well as happiness, each needs sympathetic consideration since the lives of others mirror, in many ways, our own. The term my brother or sister is not only paternal but fraternal and it includes those who we would wish to know better.
The issues which flood our minds each morning are not those describing a newly discovered microbe but usually of a person or family who in so many ways represent us. And yet, what seems to get in the way is the ideological tent they, and you shelter under.
Spain for instance is going to its elections, Beijing is hosting a massive world conference, Sri Lanka is counting the cost of the terrorist bombings and people prepare for the London marathon this weekend. Each is the focus of some event, unrelated but important in its own right. Most of us don't have focus, events just happen and are rarely planned, days come and go, weeks months and suddenly another year has escaped our attention. For some this becomes a trauma, a waste of precious time, for others it's inconsequential, like much of their lives.
The day after the Easter break will be different for each person. 
The man who lost his family in a split second as a bomb went off in the supposed security of a five star hotel in Sri Lanka. The acting muscles after competing a half marathon or the camaraderie of a walk with fellow ramblers down the bank of the local river. It might have meant a weekend protesting about climate change, or a weekend sitting alone watching television. The poor in Syria or India, apart from lacking the significance of the religious reason for celebrating Easter, would find no space in their oppressed lives to contemplate the time in any other way than as a constant struggle to find food.
The interface we share with others is a by-product of our upbringing and the learnt importance of seeing ourselves, not only as individuals (I think therefore I am) but the unique intimacy we have for others around us. 
The obsession with individual identity and the lengths we go to to express that identity as a badge, demonstrating our success or failure, distort our ability to recognise how important community is for us. 
This existentialist tug of war between self cantered egotism (an identity without virtu) or the relationalism of subjecting the ego to a lesser role, a more collegiate, sensitive role in which society at large is considered, alongside oneself as being the essence of ones -self.