connection

I recently caught myself performing connection. I’ve done this before and I’m sure I’ll do it again.

I had an intention to feel connected. I noticed myself straining to be present, hyper-vigilant about noticing everything, working so hard at “connection.”

Something about the realization this time made me wonder if I’ve ever even known anything at all about connection. I trust that I have and I do, but I’m also willing to start over and relearn everything because why not?

My desire for connection is not connection. My desire for someone else to feel connected to me is not connection. No amount of force, hyper focus, consciousness, awareness, research, copying, rehearsing, healing, fixating or staring can induce connection if it’s not mutually allowed and available. It seems so simple and obvious.

What I understand today is that it’s an allowing of myself and another person to be as we are that sometimes allows a resonance and that might feel like connection. It might last or it might dissipate. It’s a happening that I can be open to, orient towards, allow, or not, but I’m not in control of it. It’s an energy that coexists, can occur or not. I think. I’m still relearning, remembering, and re-understanding. I don’t know how I got so off track.

I can feel a sense of control around being connected to myself, my heart, my breath, my body, nature, what permeates my sphere of awareness and influence. I love remembering how my sister-friend Rain sometimes mentions the “internal locus of control” and how comforting I find remembering my own agency over my life in that way.

I don’t know why yesterday and today are the days for my mind to be blown apart around the idea that I thought I understood and was good at connection, but maybe I’ve been misunderstanding what it is, what’s possible, and had a shallow, rudimentary understanding of it for a long time that I didn’t question.

I love remembering to question if I know or truly understand what things are and if words and concepts mean the same things to different people.

I felt embarrassed, but then decided to be overjoyed to learn something new, see with new eyes and invite a fresh understanding. I’ve been like a robot performing connection. Maybe now and in the future when I notice, I’ll feel able to stop the performance and allow and learn more.