Relationships: They Are Always With Us
There comes a time in every life when the road narrows, unexpected objects come tumbling across the way, and we stumble. These are the times when the values one clings to are of little help on the cold nights, and an uncertain future beckons with a ghostly hand. Whether it be ideological moorings coming undone, friendships lost or changed, commitments that once were solid being washed away, or declarations of love turning out to be exhibited in ways that are anything but, the slow spinning depths of despondency call out, and the macabre voice echoing “we all die alone” seems more clear than usual. If we truly live and give ourselves to a world that is both capable of majestic imaginings and often asleep to the inner reality of spiritual magnificence, we will at one time or another be disappointed, adrift, and uncertain. Specific relationships come and go, and connections fade and change, yet relationships are always with us. Who we once were is cast upon a mirror and looks upon a stranger.
In those moments of uncertainty, when being alone is more than an observation, it is a feeling of such depth felt even in the midst of a crowd, there is truth to be found in the acknowledgement of who we are. We are not separate individuals possessed of a transcendent self only tangentially connected to the body with which we interact with the world. We are not Descartes’s res cogitans separated from res extensa, nor a disembodied soul only currently by happenstance flitting around in the depths of some gland, cell, or biological structure. There is no “I” without a “we” and no self without community. Even in the depths of loneliness, the voices of a thousand experiences echo in our psyche and show forth in our mannerisms, colloquialisms, and ideas. From the moment we gazed into the face of our mothers and fathers, to the base interactions of discipline and the realization that our parents or caregivers were not merely extensions of ourselves, to playground antics, school curricula, childhood, and teenage friendships and romances, we are always and forever not a single boat on a sea of life but a fleet of soaring mastheads and billowing sails.
There is a double helix in life where the “good” is inextricably connected to the “bad” in an infinite spiral of connections where one is, at times, indistinguishable from the other. All connections will have their share of each, all experiences will have potential for both, determined often by things outside of our control, whether it be another person’s history, social influences or the inner workings of our minds which we have yet to fathom. Ignoring one for the other is a disservice to the diversity of our lives and the near-infinite variety of the narratives we can create, where the homeless person knows more about living life than a rich person and where a starving child in India knows more about joy than the protuberant middle class of the United States.
At times, we may feel a union with one in particular, a narrative of such strength that it flits out ahead of the others, but at no point do the rest go away. They remain in those moments of identity confusion, feeling disconnected from oneself, and in every new situation, bringing about a facet of ourselves we never knew existed.
When we recognize the existence of self-in-plurality, feelings of being alone take their rightful place as momentary illusions predicated upon a notion of self as individual rather than individuated. This does not ignore that narrowed road or the times of stumbling when things feel like they are coming undone, but it puts them in perspective. We are so much more than any one idea, one experience, or one relationship. Dwelling in that truth lets us rise, not above, but within the reality of our lives.