When I “get” something I didn’t see before about being human, it feels like being let in on a joke, or a secret that’s been hiding in plain sight. It feels like a ritual of initiation. I like to think about fellow travelers (present, future, and past) waiting expectantly for me to wake up and unfurl this being I’m driving around.
All of a sudden, I see that thing I just realized everywhere— in music, art, turns of phrase. Like buying a Prius and then seeing all the other Priuses. It’s been there all along, like coded messages, but now I’m in on it.
Lately, I’ve been learning to pay attention to the space between things. I’m learning to notice, very organically, how everything is in physical relation to everything else, and how I’m a part of that. I’m not alone, and I’m not merging into other people. But we belong here together, in relationship.
I’m learning to shift (as a matter of experience, not an idea) from “I” to “we”. I’m starting to notice the forest, not just the trees. It’s intimate, to feel like we’re here together, weaving relationship through space. Or perhaps space weaving us into relational forms. I’m starting to finally see the choreography. To see it, it helps to literally shift my attention to the space between beings. As it turns out, that thing my artsy friends say about negative space, isn’t just an art school cliché! It’s a teaching.
Realizing the space between allows for dimensionality. I feel more oriented. When I don’t notice the space between things, then the whole world flattens like a wallpaper. I’m a lone actor in the foreground. When I notice the space between things, I’m a participant. I’m part of a we. I’m part of a whole that’s too big to be comprehended, but is moving all of us. I’m a fish in the ocean, a thread in the weave, pick your metaphor.
But I can’t stress enough, that this isn’t an idea of being in relationship to the whole. It’s the much deeper work to actually embody that perspective. To literally be a “we” more than an “I” at the level of my own subconscious. Or to be an I that’s inextricably part of a we, of a web of many beings, human and non-human.
This perspective shift reminds me of a magic eye book I loved as a kid. I spent a lot of hours learning to relax my vision, so that the 3D shape would pop out of the page, like magic. Only, this isn’t magic or an illusion, it’s simply realizing how things actually are. I’m actually a participant. We’re actually in this together. We actually belong here. And the whole, is actually mysterious to our minds.