COLLECTIVE
It’s 11:02am, west coast time. The smell of lavender and sawdust float on the subtle breeze, dancing and intermingling. They pull each other around the yard like two kids eager to share their tiny little treasures hidden in a blade of grass or buried in the dirt or in the branches of the tree. The clouds are thick, but that doesn’t stop the sun. She permeates the gray with a gentle warmth, brightening everything just enough that everything feels like quiet joy vs. shrouded sadness. I will forever love summers in the Pacific Northwest. Some of it might be nostalgia, but most of it is the everything green and crisp water and fresh air and picking wild berries and long summer days that last forever. It’s the possibility of adventure tucked into its every pocket—a home garden or snow capped mountains, there’s something to discover and experience and be present to with the wholeness of the senses.
Breathe deep. Nothing lasts forever, but let the good be good and be in it.
I’ve spent a lot of time alone the past 6 years. More than I have over the course of the last 40 combined, which is saying a lot growing up as an only child. It’s a beautiful thing learning to be comfortable spending time with just myself. I can take myself to dinner or a show or the movies or to the beach or a park or a class or an event, and enjoy my own company. It’s a chance to do what I want when I want and most significantly, to allow my experience of the experience to be my own without input from others. Being able to be alone takes practice and permission. Practice—trying it in all different settings and figuring out how to not be the most awkward in the room (I speak for myself here and know that awkward is where I thrive). Permission—allowing for being alone to actually be acceptable and having the confidence to take the risk.
I like my alone time, most of the time. And I’m an extrovert.
Being alone and loneliness are not the same, but I’ve also spent a lot of time being lonely the past 6 years. More than I have over the course of the last 40 combined, which is saying a lot growing up as an only child.
I don’t like being lonely. Does anyone, really?
Humans and animals are intended to be connected, at the very least for survival, at the most for fullness of thriving. We need each other. We always have, we always will, and especially right now, at this exact moment, in this climate, in this world—we need each other.
The times that I’ve been lonely, though very painful, full of sadness and discouragement, have been incredibly revelatory. I’m a firm believer that as humans, our capacity for feelings all along the spectrum are limited or expanded by how much we’ve experienced a particular feeling. With a deeper grief, the chance to have fuller, less inhibited joy. To know such deep loss is to then also know profound joy, finding gratitude to feel that again, understanding that all feelings are fleeting. They have something to tell us, to teach us—so listen and learn and lean in, while we can.
It is, after all, just one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver so poignantly reminds us.
My loneliness has turned to an invitation for connection as of late, looking for people and places where gathering happens, even if it means sometimes I go alone. The last couple of months were filled with this, and all unexpectedly. Standing side stage at a huge concert watching the musicians and the crowd and the lights, immersed in the reverberations of the sights and sounds. I was wrapped up in its power, sensing something in the depths of my bones. Readying my home (finally) to invite newer friends over for wine and treats and sunset porch laughs and night beach chats. We affectionately named my home the clubhouse, apropos for the playful silliness that came from our spontaneous gathering. The comedy show that quite literally brought tears to my eyes, both in laughter and in feeling seen.
The comedian masterfully weaving together a blanket of comfort that was gently placed across the crowd from encouraging humor through our shared experiences. It was an exhale, together. What struck me about the night wasn’t in the humor, funny enough. It was the two different points during the set when a song was played—His Eye is on the Sparrow and Bridge Over Troubled Waters. You could hear a pin drop. The singers voices carried throughout the room, connecting us in its profound electricity.
Trying to put words to these experiences is such a disservice. But you know what I’m talking about, right? That energy. It’s palpable and we’ve all felt it at some point. It’s the overwhelmed sense in our souls that “this is what it’s about; this is what it means to be alive.” It’s the something spectacular that happens when two or more are gathered—the individual energy harnessed into what feels like an unexplainable organic explosion of synergy. A force to be reckoned with.
Collective power.
Summer is my favorite. I can appreciate all seasons and what each offer, but summer will forever and always be my most favorite. I’ve been unsettled this summer though, antsy to make the most of it while simultaneously making zero plans. That’s what got me to jump into my car and hit the road. Well, that and a call from a dear friend saying hi, me bursting into tears, her asking when I was visiting, me throwing things in my car and heading north to hopefully find what I’ve been looking for. I already have and it’s only been a day.
I know that I must go to places where people are gathered. Sometimes it’s a big concert and sometimes it’s investing in new friendships and sometimes it’s going alone to watch comedy. And sometimes it’s what’s waiting on the other side of an 18 hour drive north.
It’s where there are open doors and warm morning coffee and seeds to be watered and lingering hugs and adorable tiny, dirty feet scampering about from the little one. It’s where you lose the dog’s ball to the wildness of hillside bushes and get whispered through the window that maybe I should take some time to sit down and write. It’s the in between of journeying from one home to the next, finding ways to not just be alive, but to live.
This is it, friends. This is collective power. It might be more easily felt surrounded by lots of people at the big special events, but I can promise you, it’s always there if we’re paying attention. That energy.
That energy—the possibility that things can change. The possibility that there’s something bigger and we’re a part of it. The possibility that goodness and beauty and justice will conquer evil. And even when it feels like absurdity, the possibility for pleasure, for delight, for profuse euphoria without guilt or shame, because this is buoy, our life raft, the very thing that pulls us above the surface of the water, a reprieve from what often feels like drowning.
It is levity that lifts us. We need to look for the places of levity, and sometimes guide each other there when it’s hard to see.
Whether alone or lonely, settled or scattered, confused, chaotic, lighthearted or heavy, nervous, embarrassed, content, scared or brave, uncertain, devastated or delighted—look to each other. Find each other. If for a passing hello on the street, a late night date night with a friend, or accepting last minute invitations to concerts or driving miles for homemade focaccia and a reset, say yes, friends. Our very lives depend on it.