Protecting The Roots And Colors And Aches Of Our Connection

[Salaam]

In a very real way it is the people themselves who determine and create the space that will connect and fit in with your life. No matter how much we may wish, expect, or idealize otherwise, they can go no farther than their behavior and way of relating permits.

A man who begot you, can never be the father you want if he himself can't treat you in a way that resonates within you the colors of connection that would come with a father. Brother's won't be brothers, no matter how much you may wish and no matter how much society or blood tells you if he doesn't treat you in a way that spurs the feelings of brotherly kinship. In that same vein, people won't get you or connect with you in the fullness of who you are if their behavior and ways of relating can't match and arouse that fullness of color.

These arousings, these washes of different flavors of connection and kinship are like "tendrils" or "roots" that connect us to each other in different degrees, but what people may not realize is that these very roots themselves are fragile, sacred, and in need of nurturing and protection.

To be lonely is painful, to ache for your "roots" to connect in fullness with another. But, to have been so lonely for so long, so denied of connection that your roots wither and retract deep inside you is a danger worse than pain alone can present. This event is the very bottom of the barrel that is emotional withdrawal and for this event to be your norm, is a deep, dangerous tragedy I wish for no single soul to feel. Yet, it is a norm I see with more and more prevalence everyday.

Have you ever felt alone in a crowd or even within your family or maybe had people clamoring for your attention, but still felt disconnected? See, physical closeness or attention, does not necessarily mean connection. It is these roots, these colors or differing degrees of kinship that make that determination. Finding "your people". The people who listen, who care, who share, and experience life with you in such a way that they can resonate with you across both the range and the depth of who you are and may possibly become.

This is hard when you grow and expand in yourself. The people you once were close with, still on a wavelength you've now progressed beyond. That doesn't make us better, it just makes us different and creates a call within us to search for others who can connect with that difference.

The deeper, more diverse, and colorful we become the deeper our call and the harder it is to find those who can resonate. But, thankfully our connection is not an all or nothing kind of thing. Even if those who would truly be "our people" would resonate in the color of "blue" for instance that doesn't mean we still can't connect in some way with all the colors and types of people that precede it.

We can still connect with the brown, red, yellow, and greens of the world and share in some way a kinship if even on the sparsest of wavelengths. We just have to be honest with how deeply they really can make us feel and not deny ourselves the fullness of connection that who we currently are craves.

It may take years to find even one who can connect with all the color of who you are, but you have to bear that burden and shelter your loneliness without harming it. It's true, there aren't many "blues" in the world and you sometimes get pushed away or ostracized by the other colors, but you have to keep going. If you don't and in your pain sever your roots, than you begin the slide to no longer being "blue" yourself, but instead "gray" and empty, devoid of all color. Dying rather than living. Going against ourselves in some of the most painful of ways that it causes us to forget that we deeply, deeply, want to connect with others.

Please don't kill that want. Bear the colors of who you are, because there are others just like you searching and bearing their burdens, hoping to find you. You are deeply precious to us and such a joy to experience once found. Keep going, your deepest bonds of family are out there waiting for you...

And if you do kill that want and you do forget it and become gray... there is still hope for you. You still carry the seeds of rejuvenation. Find again the ache of loneliness and see it for the desire it is. Protect and shelter it as it takes it's hits from the world and foster it's strength and range of color once again. This is how I brought myself back from the brink. No matter how much you may think you don't need others or how hard it is take pleasure in other people, you can bring yourself back from that place.