I begin my morning with the feeling of being in this world alone. I’m in that moment where the envelope of sleep has opened but I’m still an inch below consciousness. It’s where, some mornings, past distant ghosts float free and torment. But where nothing human is sighted to give comfort or leverage. And in this moment, I crave something human. I crave.
I believe this is a small taste of what it might be to live an overlooked life. Abandoned or just ignored. What would it be like to awaken to this as a daily reality.
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I think hermits survive only by knowing that there is someone out there, and that it was their choice to leave the world. Because the alternative, that there isn’t anyone out there, or worse, that there is, but that they have chosen to ignore, overlook, or abandon you…well, what sort of hellish life might that be?
Odd that these thoughts surface after a lovely wedding. A nephew. His beautiful new bride. Families circling and congratulating and later, cheering and dancing. It’s human contact in over-drive. And the couple are fully prepared to be each other’s human contact for life. And that’s the beauty.
But if this goes sour, as it did with my first marriage, as it can with the most intimate of lovers, the world is suddenly out of reach, and there is nothing, no hope, no human in sight, even in the middle of a crowed city. Without knowing we care about each other, we are corpses.
Without a "we," we are all stillborn. But in a peaceful, merciful, flowering "us," we find something we call God and a place we call paradise. My prayer for Erin & Ian, and for us all.
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