Separation is a prison

Separation is a prison.

I once rehearsed for a play using a Barbara Streisand song. Strange for a girl of 13 years old, but it called to me. The song was People from the film Funny Girl.

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world,” it went. “We’re children, needing other children. And yet letting a grown-up pride hide all the need inside.”

I’ll never be too proud or too grown-up or too independent to say I need people. Community. Connection. I need support and I need kinship.

Can I survive without that? You bet. But the experience is that of solitary confinement. I can survive in a prison. I can pretty much survive anything. But I’m not interested in surviving. I’m interested in self-actualization, for all of us. We can’t be the fullest expression of ourselves without others, without relationship, without connection.

It seems really “cool” to say you don’t need anyone. I get the sexy mystery of that whole “lone wolf” gig. But I think the coolest people are the ones who surrender to the interdependence innate to their humanity. Though it’s not an easy task trying to make it in life without support or connection (even though it can be done doesn’t mean it should), for the official record, maybe we don’t need anyone to survive. But we sure as hell do to thrive. And for those of us who can own that, well, we are the lucky ones.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with you all, in our co-thriving,
Lyss