This post is about connection.
Firstly, if you are reading this post and it is not yet January 22, 2010 (this coming Saturday) then you should attend a connection-themed party that a friend of mine is hosting. If you'd like to go, contact me on Facebook for time/location so I can make sure you are not a psycho killer.
A few nights ago an old friend from College visited me. We spent the evening parading across each other’s immense pasts, with haphazard enjoyment. After seven months of absence, four hours over dinner, wine, etc. couldn't come close to a comprehensive retelling. So we wandered like two wobbly old friends through ideas, history--sharing in a powerful companionship I hope lasts for the rest of my life.
Today I ran into a woman who spoke angrily of many things (I won't mention the circumstance/context to keep her identity anonymous). I was taken aback when I first encountered her abrupt need to talk about past pain and to propose (at times contradictorily) radical solutions to those things she projected were the cause of her pain. Thankfully she and I were both attending a larger event, so I could quickly mingle away from her. I thought to myself: "why of all people, do I always get stuck with these ones." Then after a few minutes reflection, I returned to her (who we will call Linda).
I felt some nudging, or some inner-need (despite an intellectual rejection) to come back to Linda. I told her that I could, actually, resonate with what she was saying. I listened to her more. It came out indeed that she was lonely--she had no family. She expressed to me the conundrum she faced at the age of sixty--whether to go on living. Excluding the question of suicide, I admit that there comes a point in life when continuing to live requires the will to do it (and I don't doubt that some people for example die simply of heartbreak--people who have lost the will to live). She also expressed that this thing about which she had spoken so vehemently to me (and to anyone else who would listen) was the one thing keeping her going. She was writing a book that talked all about it.
This book seemed one of her last meaningful connections to the human world.
My old friend from college and I decided that connection means simply being with another, mutually. It doesn't mean becoming the same as someone, and it doesn't even mean necessarily developing common ground. It simply means being present: to listen, to support and to be vulnerable enough to receive listening and support in return.
When considering the question of connection deeply I also came to understand it as the basis of purpose. I am conditioned to believe that my vocation is what will provide me with a sense of purpose--whether I become a teacher, a researcher, a singer, a conflict res expert, a therapist, an elder in the contemporary liberal Quaker tradition, etc. But what are these things I just listed? They are, most importantly, socially constituted. And the reason why they would offer me a sense of purpose is not the thing itself (the job/the vocation)--what gives me meaning and purpose is this job in its social context. Everything that I do is made possible by people in a community: the people who I affect, the skills I have acquired to affect these people, and the sense of success met (through challenge) in doing whatever it is with and for people. I am connected in a web of relationships to people and actually to all beings. To lack these relationships is not only to lack connection; it is to lack a sense of place, position, or anchoring in existence. My career means nothing without other people to make it relevant and at the same time to witness it.
We could also add to the list non-vocational positions like lover, father, wife, child, sister, friend, etc.--these are also roles we play that offer a sense of direction and purpose. They come with certain identities--someone who "is" a father has "father" in his conception of self for the rest of his life. Similarly, a doctor and/or singer has these roles permanently imprinted onto her self-conception (her identity). These positions (all of them mentioned) center on connection--the fact of shared experience and witness to an otherwise meaningless universe.
Who shall witness my life and by that fact give it purpose? I hope my perennial friendships (the good solid ones), my eventual husband, my Quaker community, and my eventual coworkers and clients will all witness my life to make it whole and meaningful. I hope that I may return this witness to each of them. So connection is a sharing of support, which I earlier posited. It is also the sharing of meaning and meaning-making, in which one acknowledges that she is not the same as anyone else and she thus cannot solve anyone else's problems. Yet she can support and witness and thus make easier others' pain and make happier and more pleasant others' joy, as they say. Connection is both mutual witness and mutual support, from which meaning and purpose are derived. This is what allows me to say: no matter what happens, I will have you. It is what allows coaches, presidents and priests alike to say: no matter what happens, we will have each other.
I am hard-pressed to find anything more basic to life than connection. Can you?
In conclusion I would like to share some quotes and links:
A poem whose author I cannot find (help on this would be welcome):
Dear friends, dear souls
dear ones, be bold
it's time to forget
all the lies
we've been told
let them drop
let them fall
let go of them all
they're poison
they're dust
and they're not even us
we're much more beautiful
than we've formerly been told.
Some beautiful pros about community (the kind I really want!):
And a link about finding the space of connectivity of which we all are aware (even if we don't know it):
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