"I owe my solitude to other people.”  --Alan Watts

This weekend I inadvertently pissed off a family member. As in, reeeeallly pissed them off. As in, relationship-ending pissed them off.

Over something that would seem to be barely worth the words about it.

And yet somehow there were plenty of words. Ugly, nasty, can’t-take-‘em back words.

At first I was shocked, bewildered. I couldn’t see how to jive what I was hearing with my own experience of our times together.

Because according to this family member, I have been a terrible, unlovable, demeaning, entitled and cruel-for-years person.

Naturally, defensiveness rose up.  

In knows-better-than-this moi.  

What! They’re calling me a person?! I’m outraged!

Well okay that wasn’t quite it. But still,

For a while, defense seemed necessary.

Danger! Sirens! Strobes! Protection from this clearly... terrible... threat! These... um...

Words.

Insert eye roll emoji here.

Yes, thankfully, seeing that there’s no legitimate or literal threat does calm things a bit.

But the compulsion to defend and protect is strong.

Because, y’know, compulsion.

After all, we’ve spent a lifetime carefully crafting a story of who and what we are, curating identity into something that we can live with.

We can’t have someone come along and turn all that careful image-building work to nothing.

That won't do.

So these identity stories require defense. It's not optional.

So F that crazy family member and their out-of-the blue finger-pointing.

Although funny thing about relationship messes - only perceived separate individuals can get into them.

Because what are relationships, if not the business of connecting with other individual persons who, amazingly enough, also have an identity to protect?

So everyone runs around projecting the preferred tale of their individuality and predilections and tolerances onto any body that has the misfortune to be nearby.

Making relationships mighty tricky stuff.

As of course anyone who has ever known any other human being already knows.

And then adding to the fun, since humans can’t see anything without filters,

In particular the filter that we’re individuals,  

It’s impossible to not project.

Which means we can never know who’s “right”.  Even though we’re positive we do know.

What a lovely field for mind’s very favorite ploy-

Drum up a good drama in order to reify the sense of self!

Ignore the filters, defend the image, protect and maintain the self story at all times, and work up a good outrage.

All while nothing is actually threatened, and nothing actually needs protection.

Oh it just loves this stuff.

Luckily for us though, if we can see through this, it’s a much less angry, dangerous world.  

Because whether we retreat to a cave and isolate, or party on down in constant company,

We are still...

Consciousness experiencing itself.

Which makes us all the same stuff. All the same intangible vapor.

And already connected to itself.

Which is why human relationship may or may not appear to be severed, but connection can’t ever be.

Because we are literally them. There’s no way to sever that.

And gratefully, truly seeing this leaves only compassion for the partners, children, coworkers, friends, parents,

For the autopilot defenses, armaments, preservations, and outrages,

And for all the beauty in suffering...

That comes with thinking we’re a person.

A person somehow able to be disconnected and cut off from others.

Instead of the vast unlimited connectedness we already have,

And already

Are.


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"There is no me or you. All that apparently manifests—the world, the life story, the search for home, is the one appearing as two, the nothing appearing as everything, the absolute appearing as the particular.... We are the dreamers in this dream, and it is fired by our longing to come home. " --Tony Parsons