When the movie Avatar came out I went to see it with my roommate and her boyfriend. Afterwards, as we were excitedly recalling the cool parts of the film, my friend asked me, "So which would you choose, Pandora or the Shire?" My answer was most definitely, Pandora. Hers was the Shire. She responded, "I figured you'd choose Pandora, I knew you'd want to fly on dragons." I laughed. It's true, I would love to be able to fly on dragons, but that's not why I chose the way I did. The key element of life in an Avatar world that swings the scales for me is connection. If everything else in the movie was the same, but their amazing ability to commune with each other and the world around them were missing, I'd choose the Shire.
Connection. It's a pretty basic desire of, I dare say, all humanity. It's what we look for when we meet new people, it's why we root for sports teams, date, meditate, go to church, go to bars, and read blogs. We want to connect. We need it. It's what we're made for.
I've been dealing with loneliness lately. For me, I believe, it's the most uncomfortable emotion. Almost all other emotions I can get comfortable with. I can accept my fear, my anger, my confusion, my doubt... I can sit with all of these and offer compassion and acceptance to them and get through them. The most common strong emotions, fear and anger, bring a powerful energy with them, so in many ways they are life-affirming. I'm okay with that. But loneliness??? Oh goodness, no.
In my characterization of emotions I've drawn "loneliness" as a waifish young girl, dressed in rags with disturbingly dark and sunken eyes that make you think of death. Not really a lass you'd jump at the chance to have tea with... But in my efforts to reaffirm my self-worth, using many techniques from Radical Acceptance and talking with my therapist, I am pointed back to this emotion. What is it that makes me dread loneliness so much? I've tried for a couple of weeks now, to sit with it, accept it, feel it, and understand it. I haven't had much progress until today...
Meditating today on this horrid feeling I realized some of the associations I have with it. My fear, with loneliness, is that my heart will be so starved for love, so long without what it needs for survival that it, like a plant without water, will shrivel up and die forever. Ugh. THAT doesn't sound like fun. I sat with that for a while and let it sink in. Thoughts swirled around and images, ideas... The idea of my soul needing love in dry soil, so it sends its roots down deeper. The idea that our energy cannot be destroyed, our souls are eternal. The idea that we are all connected so how can I ever truly be without love....so maybe it's just a self-imposed wall....
I tried to imagine being the only thing to exist in infinity. To take my fear to the extreme and imagine what if I was truly, unequivocally, undeniably ALONE. And yeah, it would totally suck for a long long time, but I think, like everything, you'd get used to it. :) And if I floated in that empty void for eons, what would happen if the solitude ended? If something (not even a someone) just appeared to share the space with me....I imagined that first there would be intense curiosity....possibly fear, but I thought after so long alone and with only myself, anything new brought into the world...I would love. Something new, something to share with...I would love it. (Now my logical brain has to argue that if it was something that caused pain I would probably not love it, but bear with me...) And then from that I've taken that loneliness is like a potential. Like the potential energy version of the kinetic energy of loving. Or maybe an action potential for love....
I'm not sure which scientific analogy fits best, but the point is that perhaps loneliness just carves out more space in our hearts for love. Maybe through loneliness we are forced to grow more roots, reach deeper to find those connections, and that will open up whole new realms and pools of love that we never before would have been able to reach. Maybe our hearts can never be destroyed as long as we are willing to reach through the pain to the love that lies beyond. We shall see....
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