The Loneliness of Being Alive & The Game of Surviving Together

Sometime back in early 2011, when the Jodi, Judy and I all lived on the same block.

This past year and a half, my best friends and I were all on these crazy spiritual journeys. We weren't calling them that as they were happening, necessarily. We were just occasionally calling each other over the phone, gasping through tears, Will it always be like this? Does anything last forever? I've never cried this much IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I'm so disillusioned.

Scattered all over the world, each of us "on our own", we had to learn to keep going without the support of each other that usually helped us through. It was a year of growing up. An era of entering our womanhood, forreal.

One of the big questions we've been asking each other is about love (most of us having ended a major long-term relationship): Is it possible to stay with someone, to stay in love, forever? and then, as if the two questions have anything to do with each other, Are we always ultimately alone?

Are we always ultimately alone?

This is where I usually get stuck with my writing... at these big, major questions, at my search for an answer in words--as if words or definitions or absolutes could ever possibly add up to the deep, visceral truth and wisdom that lives in our bodies. (The thing in us that knows, knows, knows, how impossible alone is. How exceptionally connected we are to every single thing there is).

Still, I'm a writer. I want to put words in impossible places.

So I called up Jodi and read her the beginning of this post and told her how I was stuck... and she said, That's a really powerful place to enter into, Rach. The not-knowing. That's huge. We're all trying to answer things... What if that's it... What if the not-knowing is everything? 

Upon which I answered with glee... 

Jodi, do you realize we've been spiritual life partners for over 10 years? Do you know how many "I don't knows" we've had together?!

--Probably like, thousands, at least! she said.

We both broke out in laughter... Oh my god... We've lasted! In the I-don't-know, we last!

I don't know what this means.

I don't have a pretty, sparkly bow to tie up this post.

I don't know how to package my not-knowing or my knowing-that-I-don't-know nicely.

But I think that's the point. Somehow, if we can just give in, if we can feel it all, if we can be with the scary delight of that which we'll never have rational answers to.... I don't know... Maybe then, it doesn't really matter if we're alone or not. Maybe that's the thing that melds us together: the fact that we all doubt, that we all fear, that we're all grasping for some sort of answer to make us safe and eternal. 

Maybe what matters is that we're brave enough to just keep going, eyes open, ready to see -- that we're willing to sing our doubts together, and dance and dance and dance, then fall over exhausted, and weep, if we must.

Maybe what matters is that we learn to love it all, in an ultimate, forever kind of way... sunken in, surrendered, not-knowing what we're gonna get, not letting our not-knowing get the best of us.

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What about you, beautiful soul? What's your take on these questions? I'd be honored if you entered the conversation... If you joined us in the powerful space of wondering, together.

How brave, how brave, to be alive.

love,

rachael