Have you noticed that we, human beings, spend most of our lives searching?
Sometimes our quests are wandering, because we have exhausted all well-known places and ways to find happiness, a soulmate, stability, home, fulfillment, friends... We move from one place to another, from country to country, from city to city, ... we search and we are search.
Sometimes this freedom of search is more limited - we look for the new in the old: new experiences with the same people and places, jobs and activities, trying to make something new happen to us and in a new way.
Sometimes our quest bears fruit. We find that someone, we find that something and we settle down for some moments, for years. And then, something in us moves again, something wiggles and we feel unrest, like a wisp of breeze that moves a string in our heart, a hair on our hand and utters: something is missing...
It's human nature to move, to change - and there is a small difference, every day, even in that same thing. But actually, what is that we persistently search for, that moves us through centuries, through lives, through bodies and countless experiences? Joseph Campbell says that human being is not searching so much for the meaning of life as for the feeling of being alive.
What is it that makes us alive?
Believe it or not, it's the same for all living beings.
It's a feeling of interconnection.
In the process of transformation of our consciousness, we often deal with contact: we explore what happens in us at the very thought of contact and when contact approaches us, what would we do with ourselves, would we start off the contact and what dilemmas would come across... Contact is only one part of the story, or torment, for some of us.
Connection is the continuation of the story about contact, without which, actually, the contact itself remains largely unfulfilled, sometimes even accompanied by a feeling of failure or emptiness.
The need to connect has followed us since primeval time. From the formal conception and the connection with the mother and the ground that she offers for our development inside her womb, through birth, growing up, adolescence, mature life, until the very idea of leaving this body and the end of life. If someone asks us how we imagine our death, majority would say: surrounded by our loved ones, that someone is there, holding my hand (often without expressing the fear that we don't want to die alone).
Interconnection, even in the moment of departure, gives us a jumping-off point for a further sense of self and a life that continues. It reduces fear, anxiety, discomfort. Even the unknown we step into becomes more bearable.
That mystical sense of interconnection with people and places that we sometimes feel strongly, that sometimes flickers, demands more from us, that sometimes disappears... Its absence is exposed through the feeling of isolation and loneliness.
Connecting with one’s self determines the amount and depth of how we connect with others, and again, connected presence with others allows us to connect with ourselves even more and more deeply.
Sometimes we are in contact, in the presence of some people, but... it's not really that we are interconnected. There is a difference. Contact is not the same as interconnectedness.
Let's remember the school we went to, the street we played in, the houses and places we lived in... the places where we felt alive, joyful, seen and loved are most likely the moments where we felt most connected.
Connection brings a sense of belonging.
Interconnection, when deep and soulful, may become limited to certain people and places. Like everything else in this temporary world, connection can also be limited and narrowed down to transience and duality. It was only possible then, in that place, with those people... it will never be the same again.
And you are right. It won't... But we carry with us the inheritance that others have bestowed to us, we carry our capacity for connection, which if it doesn't expand and deepen, it will most likely become stunted. In some parts of life, connecting comes easily to us... in others, not so much.
It is up to us how much our capacity for connection will change and in which direction. We are at the helm of our lives, even though it often doesn't seem like it.
And therefore, when we embark on new explorations of life, places and people, let's keep in mind how much we feel connected to the place, people, activities... may our life decisions be based on the feeling of interconnection and life that it gives rise to inside of us.
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