Lifeletter #162: Emerging from Isolation

It’s no news to most of us that loneliness is now an epidemic in our global culture. Here is what I want to say, as I look at this image of people at the back of a bus:

Maybe it’s time to put our phones back in our pockets and purses, and have a real conversation. Just how frightened have we become of real talk?

I work with many people who want to create more connection in their lives, who want to open to the possibility of real intimacy and deep friendship. They speak of this kind of intimate connection with great longing, but seem deeply perplexed about how to even begin creating such a life.

I think there is another way of looking at this picture. Instead of making a huge project out of creating connection, as if we need to bash our way out of our cave of isolation, we could begin by realizing that we are already connected. The nature of life is connection- everything is connected to everything else. This is one of the primary ways in which life expresses its sacred nature. Life is constantly knocking on my door and inviting me to participate, join in, team up, come together. Isolation is not our natural state, connection is.

So the question is really not about how to create connection, but about how I am managing to create so much isolation. It takes a lot of work to remain disconnected and separate. I have to keep saying ‘no’ to all of the invitations that life offers me to connect, to join in, to participate. I have to keep my walls intact. I have to retreat and fend off whoever wants to see me, hear me, know me.

Creating a life that is full of authentic connecting is a lot like growing a garden. It takes intention in the beginning. And it requires follow through-the garden needs tending. It needs light and food and water and weeding. But it grows by itself, as you tend it. And the harvest is always surprising and somewhat miraculous, because you didn’t really make it happen. The irrepressible force of life, the immense vitality of life, is what brings those plants up through that dark earth and into the light.

Love, intimacy and friendship are like this. We need to commit to watering and nurturing the whole field of connection in our lives. If this is not a priority, if we make a lot of other things more important, we’ll wake up one morning and realize we are terribly lonely. The garden of  relating dies without our love, commitment and attention. But if we decide to nourish it, it will grow and flourish with an energy and vitality that is astounding. Because we all need connection. Life without it is barren, flat and and empty. True intimacy and friendship are the essential ingredients of our human happiness. And they are also the ground of our healing, evolution and awakening.

The fact that we live in a culture that is creating more and more isolation deserves our full attention. How are we going to respond to this situation? We can’t ask our government to pass a law about this. It’s up to you, it’s up to me. Each day, as we move through this world, is a day in which we can reach out, and make ourselves vulnerable to a true meeting, a moment of real intimacy.

 

As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin. Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,

it would barely make a sound.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

with love,

Shayla

 

Graphic Credit :updateordie.com