Category: Interpersonal Relationships (non-romantic)

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

It’s important to get that in a very real and marked way, one conversation really can spark new worlds, open new possibilities, change a life – the nature of it, the context, the shape of its future and trajectory of its path. I recall a countless sum of these flavorful kinds of conversations, both one on one and in a community or group setting alike, that as I look back and scan the outflow that came of that dialogue, I’m connected to the shifts and course changes that would have never ensued otherwise. A whole other world sprouted out of a moment in time spent sharing words that mattered. A new future emerges. Just like that. It was this breed of conversation that catapulted me to California, 3000 miles from all that was familiar and safe, driving west to manifest destiny. Somewhere in a parallel reality, the shape of my life is entirely unrecognizable, were I able to peep a glimpse. And where it split off was in a conversation. Fierce words that pierced my fear and awoke a slumbering Self. Yet this was a cooperative and participatory act, for words that make a difference only do so in those willing for a difference to be made, those willing to put themselves at stake, and gamble familiarity (*beware this league of communication – there is often a shore to leave; but oh those glimmering horizons towards which they may cast you).

And so, my brilliant bevy of mattering word utterers…engage. Pivot the chronic pull to figure it all out in the confines and isolated crevices of your mind. Check in to life and with others, fully, out here, where life is happening, and have important conversations. Your engagement with the world, and the folks with whom you share it, brings honor to life and all it has to say; lends a wide open platform to unfurl its secrets. Hold them up to your heart and hear the soft taps of truth and tale. Offer others the gracious space of your sacred listening on which to unfold their own found magic. Invite dialogue that digs. Ask questions that raise eyebrows and tickle brains. Dare to be intimate. Be willing to get messy.

Request coaching and contribution and support from the lush and endless resources that abound in your life (Google’s got nuthin’ over personal exchange). Place your know-all up on a mantle, let it rest for just a while (don’t worry, you can have it back), and allow for naivete to be an asset now. Tap in to the lives of others and fold their findings into your cache (this could potentionally be one of your highest yielding life hacks). Nothing lights people up like contributing what they know and sharing life experience; let them be that gift. Voice your wants and challenges and make bold requests for what you need. Put the whispers of your heart on loud speaker. Then listen keenly. Plug in. Seek, explore, play, co-create through language. Generate possibilities into being starting with the word; this really can be linguistic alchemy. Try things on. Lean in to life, and try out someone else’s model of living and working, for a day, an hour. See what happens. Experiment with what is said, even when it’s totally new and uncomfortable (perhaps especially when).

In these exchanges, allow the seemingly fixed parts of you to re-order and contort for the sake of expansion. Put your identity at risk. The uncomfortability will soon be assuaged by a newfangled, thrilling existence, where you may just find the magic sauce, the sweet spot. We weren’t meant to level off or for rigor mortis living. I think we were always meant for the becoming; any moment of interaction is a next possible abracadabra.

Accept that even a mere sentence has the power to go THUD in a room and rearrange the formula of the future. Be open to discoveries in a single interaction that can alter everything on a dime, because anything can – if we’re open.

And above all, it begins with the willingness to have any of it profoundly make a difference.

Happy conversing. Everything you want really is here for you.

It’s July 1st?? Whaaa?! d’uh fuq?…I just came in from my night walk in my neighborhood park brimming with ogling lovers spooning ice cream to each other, dogs dashing the field blissed the fuck out because wheeee GRASS!!, old friends at stone tables intent on crushing the other on the chessboard between ’em, and i’m swooning up at the moon who is most definitely smiling precisely back at my twitterpated gaze, and i feel…..romanced (athat moon and i are something of an item, you know) and i’m falling madly deeply in love with my life all over again. (I’m talking in that hardcore, teenage way – yeah, that intense)….when it suddenly dawns on me – it’s my San Franciscaversary….!!!!! 2 exact years since that fated first blind date, when I rode in past midnight, travel-bedraggled and weary, with little more than my houseplants and an AirBnB reservation. This SF with her sexy reputation, and me, Bay Area Bambi on her wobbly legs and doe-eyed high hopes – I knew not one of her dizzying streets, not one of her (many) suitors or lovers, not any of her murky moods or sunny spirits. I was simply a girl showing up, hoping to be loved. I wasn’t even sure I’d grow to love her. I wasn’t quite sure of anything really – except that i was terrified and thrilled and everything was possible and nothing was certain (as any epic love begins). i’d left my life and all that was familiar 3,000 miles behind, for what MIGHT await me here.

And now here i am, two full cycles ’round the sun later, looking up at that same all-knowing moon i once begged for answers from on a night back in Philly concerning the decision to take this very life leap i ended up pursuing, and it’s all so sparkly crystal clear why i left, why i showed up. It was who and what lay on the other side awaiting me, that pulled me here – like that voluptuous moon’s pull on her abiding sea. i just didn’t know it then.

If you’re reading this and you’re one of those folks residing on the other side of that giant YES i bellowed those years ago, i want to thank you in ways that “thank you” doesn’t quite have the muscle to deliver, but you should try to grock anyway.

I want to thank you for being my moonpull. The invisible force that hooked into my heart and led it West, whispering “Come with me; we’ve got plans for you.” For getting especially loud around the time of Colorado I-80w, when i very nearly turned the car around to head back east, mid-“what-in-holy-fuck-am-i-doing?!”-sobfest. “You can cry as much as you need, just keep driving West,” you echoed in my heart. So i rode – trusting and crying and driving and meltdowning, interspersed with bison jerky breaks (man, i love those Rocky Mt. pitstops), following that pull, my heart irrevocably lassoed by it. It had a present for me. You.

And oh man, You. You who makes my life fertile and rich and alive and replete with nutrients that feed my spirit and rapacious appetite for delight and laughter. You who so often, and without knowing, bring me to fat, blubbery tears of joy out of my sheer awe that i could be loved so well by so many perfect precious people. You who hopped on my path and shifted its curviture forever. You are why I find my life so divine, so delicious. You are the sweet in my honey moon.

If perchance you don’t know you’re in that You, then this: if ever I’ve said “i love you” this side of the Mason Dixon, you’re the you my Cali residency belongs to, the you I heard piercing through the sobs; and when I’ve said “i love you”, what i’ve always meant is all that i’ve stated here. “I love you” is simply the Cliff Notes. When i say i love you, i’m saying thank you for guiding me down roads I do not know how to traverse alone, even when you don’t know you’re doing it, just by virtue of your being. I’m saying thank you for giving my life shapes I didn’t know it could ever make. I’m saying i’m in on your secret, you time-hopping travel guides. A girl back on Interstate 80, trembling at a driver’s wheel, listened…showed up…and now finds herself in a future rife with delight, swooning under a sweet honey moon on a murky July night, falling madly deeply (epically) in love with her life, in that teenage way. Because of You.

So thank you…and all that it means.