Braving The Wilderness: Hold Hands With Strangers

Chapter 6: Hold Hands With Strangers;

Everyday life can be incredibly hard, and the people around us can push us to the very edge of our nerves and our civility.

Cover it all in leather;

We think we could just get rid of everything or cover it with leather, our pain would go away. 

If you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside, that's how your temper would cool down.

How do we cultivate and grow our belief in inextricable human connection internally?

Show up for collective moments of joy and pain so we can actually bear witness to moments of joy and pain with strangers.

What experience of collective joy and pain looks like;

1. You'll never walk alone.

Inextricable Connection;

The experiences of joy and pain that people feel, tells us what is true and possible about the human spirit. We need these moments with strangers as reminders that despite how much we might dislike someone on facebook or in person, we are still inextricably connected. And it doesn't have to be a big moment with thousands of strangers. We can be reminded of our inextricable connection after talking with a seatmate on a two hour fight.

The problem is that we don't show up for enough of these experiences. We clearly need them.

The more we're willing to seek out moments of collective joy and show up for experiences of collective pain for real, in person, not online, the more difficult it becomes to deny our human connection, even with people we may disagree with.

We are wired for connection, but the key is that in any given moment of it, it has to be real.

- A sensation of sacredness;

- A ministry of presence

An experience of collective pain does not deliver us from grief or sadness, it is a ministry of presence. These moments reminds us that we are not alone in our darkness and our broken heart is connected to every heart that has known pain since the beginning of time.

Common Enemy Intimacy;

Hanging out with people who hate the same people you do. This counterfeits connection and the opposite of true belonging.

When all that binds us is what we believe not who we are, changing our mind or challenging the collective ideology is risky.

- It is not true collective joy if its at the expense of others and it is not true collective pain if it causes others pain.

Getting Social;

Social media are great for developing communities but for true belonging, real connection, and real empathy require meeting real people in a real space in real time.

Courage and Collective;

Both joy and pain are vulnerable experiences to feel on our own and even more so with strangers.

The foundation of courage is vulnerability, the ability to navigate uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.

It takes courage to open ourselves up to joy. Joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience.

In those vulnerable moments of individuals or collective joy, we need to practice gratitude. Pain is also a vulnerable emotion. It takes real courage to allow ourselves feel pain. When we're suffering many of us are better at causing pain than feeling it.

So, to seek out moments of collective joy and to show up for moments of collective pain, we have to be brave. That means we have to be vulnerable.

No vulnerability, No courage.

We have to show up and put ourselves out there.

Despite the need to brave the wilderness, we don't always have to walk alone...

#Ibelongtomyself...