My life journey, as most of our journeys, started before I knew the word journey, and all complexities of that word, that have been revealed to me over the years. It was many years ago, when I was a relatively young woman, that I was struck, literally stopped in my tracks, with the idea of paradoxical nature of the experience of being alive on this earth. That somehow, we were being invited to grow into a state of being in which our inside true self might eventually find its way out to be revealed, and the ultimate reality of our essential togetherness would highlight the aloneness with which we travel. These paradoxes, at the time, were new to me, but on some fundamental level, I knew they were deeply true; existentially true.
Life swept me along its incredible path, and I began to mature. I fell in love, got married, several years later I had children, and then when I was only a very young 36, my brother died. He was 42 years old and just a few days prior to his death, he was full of life. A previously unknown congenital defect in his brain gave way, and the flood of blood drowned out his life and his thoughts and his mind. He was one of my two best friends. The experience of the death of a person so close to me, opened me up to the paradox once again.
The other friend was my husband. My husband was able to live many more years but he also unexpectedly died when he was 62. In between these two significant losses in my life, I helped to raise my two children. My first born, a girl, was so full of life and wonder that as I tried very hard to understand and nurture this girl and soon to be young woman, I hardly knew how to keep my feet on the ground, and keep my balance on the rotating earth. It was during her adolescent and teen age years that I began to remember the lesson that I was introduced to, many years before; We are all eventually our own best traveling companions if we can learn to be inside out, and together alone. My son taught me along the way too. His tender heart disguised itself in his good looks, his charm and his even keel manner. Yet, under that façade of confidence, was a boy, and now man, who felt deeply but didn’t have the cultural permission to be fully masculine and also feel deeply.
Life, and my fellow sojourners have been my teachers, with the hardest lesson being that our journey is enhanced somehow if we can learn to be inside out, and together alone. Each one of us a significant influencer in the world around us, and yet intrinsically connected to all living things.
I wonder, if we could bring the inside out, and see our interconnectedness, how might our journey of together but exquisitely alone as we make our choices and determine our influences, be altered.
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