We have over the course of our existence, been searching for connection. Connection amongst our own selves, as well as connection with the world around us. We have tried running, traveling, hiding and even the ever popular, failed relationship. Never did we feel connected to anything, or anyone. Walking forever alone in a sea of living things.
The obstacles to our connectivity were for our own protection. Walls and barricades, made harder and stronger by time and trauma. Reinforced by repeat victimization. You see, when you are taught how to be the victim, predators can spot you like a bird of prey eyeing up his next meal. Out of a desire to connect, be accepted and desired, we eagerly fall into their grasp. Even with the protective layers built around our psyche, we cannot protect ourselves from our greatest enemy, Loneliness. The desire to interact with other living things will drive many of us to take in strays, not only the four legged kind, jump feet first at the first sign of attraction and desire; Hosing tightly as we know eventually this too shall pass. We will drive them away. We can never connect intimately. We can never get close. We are always alone even in the arms of one who claims to love us.
As our journey has spanned both hemispheres and four continents, as well as fourth years, we still seek that which we lost so many years ago. A time when we were connected to each other, without the fragmented reality we now exist in. Like an idea that tugs at the threads of your existential being, you desire it, you need connection.
Currently living in Southeast Asia, the most recent stop on our quest for the end of Tha rainbow, we have experienced for the first time connection. Connection so real and tangible, we could feel the very molecules in the air around us moving. We could sense each other not as fragments, but as a singularity. Cohesively thinking and sensing our environment without fear and trepidation. Fear you see, is the obstacle to freedom. We began our adventure in a noodle shop on the side of the road, in Nong Hoi Thailand. A journey that began as a casual hello and ended as something more human than we have ever experienced. The closest thing we can ever remember that brought us this close was being at the birth of our child. This was further down the rabbit hole still.
During our evening out for birthday, we took a trip. We adventured through time and space, to a point where time stopped. Where fears fell away and senses were expanded past consciousness. We entered the void we so desperately had been trying to find. We found ourselves, and quite ironically, we were not alone. We could at last FEEL the world around us. Unfragmented, and unadulterated by fear and trauma. This was as intoxicating as any drug we have ever done. This is too profound to properly capture in the written word as we so desperately are trying here. We could see the music, the sound waves passing through the air, the sensations of the lights moving over our body like cosmic fingers. We were one with our environment. However we could not name to you which one of us was present. We all share the same memories of that evening, however none of us, alters, were there.
As we transcended the conscious plane, and travelled further into what was moments ago, unreachable to us, we questioned our sanity. This action was of course not strange to us. We have, as well as most others that meet us, questioned our sanity and rationality. However this time we did so because we did not fear that which was upon us. We were completely immersed in this sensory porridge, yet not drowning or panicked. We were in touch with every aspect both seen and hidden, yet completely safe. Why were we not afraid? We seek to discover this very thing. What happened to the deer that has protected us for so long? Why, in this moment without our fears did we not freeze and run?
To be continued after our next journey…
Living as Whole Fragments 