The Love of One Another
Covid 19 isolation baby!
On a normal Sunday my Beloved and I would likely dance with our ecstatic dance group in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A lovely bright room, and a miraculously dedicated facilitator would greet us along with 50 plus other souls who value movement in the morning once a week for health and wellness. Many report that it’s often difficult to meet their authentic selves fully, immediately. It takes the hour and half of facilitated “5rhythms” music to really become present and be right there in the room, not paying bills, or chasing children, or concerned about the peeling paint on those south facing windows. We two are no exception. The concerns of the hour, the day, and the year only melt away with time spent moving and “showing up”. But virtual house arrest has altered this cycle. The movie house is shut, and so is the job site. Non essential medical procedures are not allowed. And so my Beloved and I are at home, with our dog, making food. It’s intimate. It has its beauty. But we humans are a pack animal. To say that we get a lot from each other would be a huge understatement. Saying hello at the market. Seeing each other in line at Home Depot. An impromptu meeting at the Starbucks with an old friend and a shared hug? These things make life worth living. Wondering what to do, frustrated at the necessary quarantine away from her comrades, our ever creative facilitator invoked the internet’s potential. And while awkward and weird and high tech, she managed a dance we did in our homes communicated via the wireless, wires, and airwaves that Zoom affords. I was skeptical. I almost didn’t get out of bed. Technology, logistics, timing; a “why bother” washed over me. But I got up and walked the dog and ate quick and addressed the truth of my depression and set up the tripod with the iPhone, yes marveling at the tech potential in the back of my mind, but annoyed and run down nonetheless. And then... there were all the faces, moving, of my mutually isolated friends. I brightened. And slowly I became astonished. Connection. As people said hello, and waved over the business card sized portions of the screen and recognition of a shared experience set in, something happened. I stopped feeling pissed and confused and alone. Imperfect, not the equivalent of receiving an actual embrace from a friend, but real, electric, an honest exchange an actual meeting of hearts. I didn’t actually expect it. I was surprised. Of course I’ve done Zoom meetings. They are a de riguer part of our modern world. And they have been fruitful, but this was a need met, not just a convenience for minimizing driving. Not just the part and parcel use of our extraordinary system for remote work. This was connection at a needed root level. This was friends meeting friends and doing an activity together with 2 and 50 and 1,700 miles separating us. It worked better, of course, because we know each other, but it worked. And the electrical thread of connection that is there between us, re-surged and served, us all. It turns out, we need each other.
I need my tire guy. He knows tires. Someone else made my roof rack, and boy can that steel structure carry wood. A woman labored and my broccoli got washed properly and that annoyingly sturdy rubber band was set by her strong hands. Another important woman labored and I was born. Still others, a good friend from college, knows the way of the clean room and the micro chip, and he lays the foundation for my I phone. I am not unaware of the Chilean worker operating a CAT 915 XL at the sulfate seam down in the Atacama. We need each other. And as this forced minimum social movement plays out it becomes abundantly clear, I value going to the movies. And I even value my time in line at the bank, in ways I did not previously understand. Now I can’t wait to get my oil changed and stop for a burger on the way; talking to those good people and seeing their faces. I need you, and you need me, and not just for the stuff, but for the relational moments it takes to get the stuff. I need you and you need me to remind each other that we are. We are here. We are breathing together. We are shoulder to shoulder in this life. I have discovered that the moments of not getting along are much more welcome than hanging around in my house for a month. These moments make me human, make us human.
The three of us have been friends for 38 years. Warren and Tom, for 9 years prior. Boyhood neighborhood best friends and the connection stuck. I enter the picture in college and we all click in a new way. Fast forward to the time of the dreaded C-19 isolation months. I’m in Los Alamos, Tom in Portland, Warren in San Clemente. I sent a text to both of them, reaching out to say; “ hey how are you”? and our thread evolved. “Thanks for establishing this chat Andrew, how cool to be connected again in this way”; says Tom. Three guys hanging out together through the ether; letters on a screen, but so much more. A shared vibe. A shared industry. A shared pathos. A shared understanding... Tom; “this morning this vagrant was asleep on my back porch with his dick out; wake up call”! And Andrew; “ we had 6 burglaries in our little down town last night”. And, Warren; “I was going to cut up tighty-whities for the heavy cotton that's supposed to be good for masks ... was getting past the aesthetic of wearing underwear on my face when not playing a ... different game. But, diapers... maxipads ... that's another level”. Why do we read? To know that we are not alone. And why do we connect with others? Same reason. Simply put, we love one another. We are each other’s keeper of the keys, the bee knees, the frosting, and the meat. What is our society’s worst punishment? “The hole”; solitary confinement. The tester of prisoners from time immemorial. Will they crack? Most do. It takes the gift of the Stockdales, and the Joe Simpsons, and the Ellen Ripleys of the world to guide us through to our innate mental toughness, but we must get out to actually live.
Introverts are perhaps getting something they need. And the extroverts are getting a lesson. It may not yet be time for lemonade; something deeper must be felt first. And that something is the truth of our mutual interdependence. I cannot climb the mountain without the shoes. Did I make those shoes? And I cannot get to town without the necessary slowing down at the lights. Did I make the lights? And I cannot raise my children by myself. Who made the books and the balls and the playground?
We are here, on our earth, together.
Thank you dear readers and friends for being out there, also waiting as patiently as possible, (or climbing the walls!), for a hug.
Andrew
