Dear Spiritual
Partner,
The longer we are
isolated the more we want to be together. But we do not gather
because we love the people we are isolating ourselves from. That is why we
are isolating. So the coronavirus is showing us new ways to express our
love, creative ways, ingenious ways, joyful ways that
expand the bounds of cocreativity and redefine togetherness away
from the five-sensory understanding as physical proximity to the
multisensory experience that is far beyond that.
The coronavirus is
showing us how shallow were so many of our relationships that we thought
were deep. Before the coronavirus reshaped our lives, we exchanged
countless hugs, blew countless air kisses, and smiled countless smiles
without inner warmth. Now, in our isolation, we are beginning to see that
togetherness is more than these things. When I was addicted to sex I
thought it was the ultimate experience of togetherness until I realized
that the women I was attracted to and who were attracted to me did not care
about me any more than I cared about them, and I did not care about them.
They were all replaceable to me, and I was replaceable to all of them.
Said more
accurately, I was not able to distinguish love from fear, and so I thought
that need was love and finding and having was love fulfilled. Now we are
each, in our own way, beginning to see that many of the experiences we
thought were love fulfilled were actually need fulfilled. When need is
satisfied, it returns, often soon. We did not recognize this important clue
that what we felt was more than it appeared to be. It was an insatiable
need to fill an emptiness, to mask a deep pain that would not leave and
would not lessen. That is the pain of powerlessness.
The pain of
powerlessness is the pain not being chosen for the team. It is wanting to
belong and not belonging, wanting to be loved and not feeling lovable,
wanting to love and not feeling able to love, not wanting others to see you
the way you see yourself or they would not want to be with you. It is
feeling intrinsically defective, inherently flawed. All of us have the pain
of powerlessness. When we do not recognize it as an internal
dynamic, we experience it as caused by the world, and the remedy for it is
to change the world. When consciousness of this dynamic is entirely
lacking, the result is an irresistible hunger that will not cease. It is the
hunger for meaning, for admiration, for understanding, for love disguised
as hunger for food, shopping, alcohol, sex, and success, among many others.
These things come
into focus in isolation. We long for others, not for what others can do for
us or to us. We long for the closeness that is absent when we are absent
from our lives. We see the value of others, and it is beyond all that we
could have imagined. We see Italians singing to one another from balconies;
Swiss villagers projecting flags of other countries onto a mountain,
thanking all of us that we are with them in the world; we see New Yorkers
filling the concrete canyons of their city with cheers for nurses, doctors,
ambulance drivers, hospital janitors, technicians, and all who have the courage
to risk their lives for others; we see brave, bold, and beautiful
individuals around the world of every culture and color risking their
health and lives for the benefit of others, and we love them all. We see
their beauty and strength, and we long to as courageous and compassionate.
We can be. We will
be. When is for us to decide. They have made their decisions. Now we can
make ours. The coronavirus is showing us all of this.
This is the miracle
of the coronavirus.
Love,
Gary
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