Accidental Human Confessional Booth

“Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”

“To hold your breath is to lose your breath.”

~Alan Watts~

When you become attuned to yourself, Others become attuned to you. When you know who you are, others want you to know who they are. When you can see the trauma in someone else’s eyes and recognize your own, connection is not only possible. It is inevitable. They will see themselves in you. They will see the truth of their story. Can you tell someone that just made the biggest mistake of their life, that they are okay. Can you mean it? Can you really say to them, learn from this because if you can learn from this then you will be okay. Can I ask you a question? Because the first one will be hard for you to answer, but if I keep going and ask you more, how many minutes will it take for you to bear your soul? I can see it from here. It lives in your eyes. It lives in the creases of your mouth. It lives in the breathless way you talk about it.

What is your IT? We all have an it. Where are you broken? Is there a scar? Is there a mountainous crevasse? A chasm that needs to be surmounted. Shall we go caving, or do you call it spelunking? We can go deep. We can go all the way to the bottom. We can go so far down into it that we come out the other side and realize that we have peaked. We have climbed Everest. Together. 

old wooden language

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” 

~Wendell Berry~ 

“Very often, it is the crisis situation that actually improves us as human beings. Paradoxically, while these incidents can sometimes ruin people, they are usually growth experiences. As a result of such calamities, the person often makes a major reassessment of their life situation and changes it in ways that reflect a deeper understanding of their own capabilities, values, and goals.”

~Richard Farson~

Before I learned to speak, what did I say?

Before I learned to think, what were my thoughts?

Did I throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Have we replaced emotional connection with synthetic simulation?

When was the last time you asked a stranger how they are, and then actually listened to the answer?

How are you? Please. I really want to know.

When was the last time you asked yourself how you are, and then actually listened to the answer?

How am I? Please. I really want to know.

Sat Nam - I Am

You are.

Is the question too big? How are you? Are we actually having a philosophical conversation here? Is this existentialism? Phenomenology? Buddhism? I thought I was just getting groceries.

But instead, I say: I’ve been thinking about the nature of selfhood and its relation to trauma.

To which, you reply: I don’t actually want to disconnect from connection, I want to disconnect from the noise.

Oh yes. Oh yes, my friend. Are we friends now?