For a second, I could see it
It’s a strange state to be in, when our bodies have been tenderized enough to take in more than we usually do. It’s also one that feels important to write from inside of before it dissolves. Here’s a transmission from that place.
It didn’t happen while walking, but after.
Riding in a car for the first time in two full weeks, my body began relearning how to be conveyed, rather than convey itself. The kind-eyed van driver was accustomed to transporting sensitive, potentially activated systems: groups of pilgrims, groups of school children, his own disabled son. He played music that was soft but moving. Didn’t bother to start a struggling, bilingual round of small talk (but kindly indulging my one attempt).
I could feel his slight smile even if I couldn’t see it. Made a mental note to try to be more like Raimundo.
From the van’s front seat, I watched in muted awe as the road before me became the road behind me without my having moved a muscle. In response, those very muscles relaxed more deeply. My mind followed suit. My heart opened of its own accord. The safety of the moment enveloped me like a warm bath.
Teeming with life
As the sky slowly brightened, we moved from the thoroughfare dotted with tiny villages onto an uncrowded highway lined with pines and hills and cliffs. After an hour we exited into Vitoria, a major-ish city, to drop off one of our number at a major-ish train station for the next leg of her journey.
At 11am on a Thursday, Vitoria’s streets were full of folks out and about, speaking to each other, on errands, off screens. The highway had been free of cars, I realized, because so few people have them. As in so many European cities, they spend their time in their lives, right where they are.
In the 30 minutes it took to drive into and back out of the city’s heart, my softened senses took in no fewer than a thousand souls. In this one tiny corner of the world where I’d never been—never even heard of—were hundreds of humans in pairs, on their own, on missions, crossing streets, moving in and out of shops, pausing to visit with each other.
For a second, I could see it.
I sensed for the first time maybe ever that every single one of these people are just like each other, just like me. Imperfect. Struggling. Waking up with lists of the day’s tasks in their heads. Lonely or overwhelmed at times. Working on improving what they can. Needing to eat, to sleep, to poo. Coordinating schedules.
They love so hard. There’s so much they’ve lost.
Every single one of them in their own world. Yet from where I sat—not among them but rather in this slightly elevated, hyper-receptive place of observation—it was a hive of bees, a swarm of ants, a murmuration of starlings. A massive legion of life occurring in this one place.
Multiply this by billions.
All of us across this vast world, doing the same things, feeling the same things—our own versions of it, sure, but the same raw material. Billions of us, flying in formation as one humanity.
And yet we think we are alone! We think we are the only ones who struggle with whatever we struggle with. We believe our network of a few dozen familiars to be the only other humans who exist. We think it’s up to us to keep the world spinning. We think nobody really understands us. We think we hold sway over others’ lives, or feel we’ve failed when they end up living their own story anyway.
We think… we think.
We think we aren’t we.
Walking almost 150 miles over two weeks finally exhausted me enough to break up my own insistent thinking, and make way at last for seeing.* For a second, my freed-up imagination saw each of these folks turn toward each other in sudden recognition. “Oh! You! It’s happened to you too. You feel it too. We’re having the same trip. Playing the same game.
“What if… what if we did this together?”
I’ve heard so many times and in so many ways that separateness is an illusion. In this divinely choreographed moment, in these perfect circumstances, I could feel it. My imagination saw what we have forgotten. All we have to do is turn toward each other. Recognize. Remember.
And not to bring every dang revelation back to Soul Writing, buuuut…
This turning toward each other is what happens when we gather, in big and small ways. We dig up what’s true for us, we let others see it, we recognize each other’s experiences in our own. We realize we share the same story. We give the mind, the critic, a chance to rest so that our souls and imaginations get the floor for an hour, two hours, a day.
So, as always (and even more now) I invite you into this magical place imagination and mutual recognition. One that hopefully lets you relax a little bit more into this web of humanity, and remember you aren’t—not for one second—alone.
———-—
*It’s not lost on me that it took that much exertion, over a matter of literal weeks, to quiet my analytical mind enough that it finally, finally stopped interfering with deeper experience—and even then for only a brief flash. This is something I’ll continue to examine for sure… and I’m so curious about what you have found in this regard? What does it take to chill out your inner narrator? Please share this and any other thoughts in the comments.
