A very recent Covid hobby is building my family tree, something my grandfather was already hugely into, tracing one of the family branches back to the 1600s in France long before the internet with its plethora of sources existed.
A family tree begins with you, the protagonist, and fans out from there. Yet, the perspective changes as soon as you see the family tree from a relative’s perspective, where you slide into the supporting role, and she becomes the protagonist and with that the “center of the universe.”
Following any marriage or birth hint leads down a rabbit hole as you dig deeper and deeper into a particular family branch. The tree is never ending. The six-degrees-of separation theory already purported that we can connect with anyone on this planet through a succession of five contacts. That seems now totally plausible. One distant relative immigrated from Germany to the US in the early 20th century and now appears in at least twelve other US family trees. With that the visceral realization pops up how interconnected and embedded in this massive web of life we truly are. In effect you are the center of the universe, but so is everyone else, making for a holographic universe where every one aspect is an aspect of everything else.
Our DNA spreads in homeopathic doses all over the world, the same way the air we breathe in and out mingles with the air everyone else breathes in and out. There is no separation, we’re all connected. We are all at the center of the universe, and so is everyone else.