A reader was gracious enough to remind me of the writer Dan Milman’s comment in “Sacred Journey Of The World” that life is not a private affair, our stories are only made real and useful if shared. For me, on this end of the remarkable spectrum, there is the great awakening to the idea – growing inside of me these last few years – that what we have in common is so much more important than what we do not if one can learn to see it. And what do we have in common, all of us reading this now?
A feeling of being different, a sense of the outcast, of being strangers, of being fearful, of not being known, of not being safe. Of wanting more, of hoping and searching. Peaceful warriors for a meaningful life.
Someone messaging me on Facebook said she was relieved to see that I had some of the same feelings she did, and I wanted to give her a hug and say to her, “don’t you know that I have all of the same feelings you do, we are not different, we are not apart, we are all one thing sharing the same experiences of life, just from different prisms, and scattered paths and diverse directions? We all get to the same place. We are born. We die. We love and want to be loved. We tremble and want to be safe.”
That is our connection, that it is sense we all have that we know each other, when all of the dust and debris and posturing and worry is cleared away, tossed into the bucket like dirty water when we wish to cleanse our spirits and souls. When we look into the other world – the world we are shut out from, the tent we can never ever, the circle we are always outside – there is a great cacophony of anger, suspicion, fear and accusation. So we look for safe places, or open our hearts to the pure spirits of animals. We are a safe place to one another, that is the shock and drama and beauty of it. This is our world, not theirs, and if we will never understand theirs, they will never understand ours. I can’t imagine why this is so, but it seems to be so.
We seek to free the creative spirits inside of us and find the light that shines everywhere in life, if you can only see it. We all feel alone, and the tragedy is that many of us spend our lives not realizing that we are not. Our culture divides and separates us, offers us labels, keeps us frightened and distracted, pummels us with mostly false notions of money and security and shallow meaning for our lives.
We are not different from one another. We come from the same place and are going to the same place, and the Peaceful Warrior struggles every day to make meaning and joy out of what is in between. Life is not a private affair, something I sensed when I was called to begin this blog and write my books in the country and take my photos in the light.