Connection.
I'm sitting in a group of 50-68 year old Anglo-Saxon, trying-to-make-the-best-of-it-all lifers, most of whom used to think of themselves as middle-class before the markets crashed in 2001 and 2008. There are thirty of us sitting in a living room called together this day to talk about "connection." Most of these people have probably filed for bankruptcy, or seriously considered it, at least once. There's a connection. Most consider themselves "conscious" in the new age vernacular of the word. All have been through some form of psychoanalysis. All consider themselves Cultural Creatives: the ones who make mundane life seem somehow interesting. These are the people who came of age sometime between 1963 and 1977; the Golden Years of idealism. However, I think the light bulb must have shorted out somewhere along the way.
Here we are in 2012 and most of us are struggling to make a living, have been divorced at least once (and most, twice), can't understand or afford to understand the paradigm shift to business brought upon us by the Technology Age, and don't know what happened to peace and love. Wine is passed around.
Are we celebrating something? We have all survived so far. Cool. That really helps.
Are we numbing ourselves? Just a little won't hurt. Maybe a little more.
Is this called coping? Talking about connection is at least getting the dialogue started. And how many times have we begun this dialogue?
I don't understand this place. It's like everyone is talking Vulcan or Klingon or something very foreign. Yet, I swear, I've heard all these exact words before in some weekend Gestalt workshop, or UU church event, or holistic-something gathering where we tell each other how wonderful we all are and try to sound like we know what the hell we're doing here.
If anyone were to really connect in this room, I think there would be a nuclear explosion from all the pent-up aggression. We're so desperately clinging to what should be that nobody is really dealing with what is.
I sing. I do what I do. I get people to sing along and clap. And dance. And put arms around each other. I warned them first. This is a new song, I told them, but it is just like every other song I've ever sung at a gathering of this type. I tried to get them to realize things just don't change; we just put on new clothes, or a new hat, or color our hair, or write a new song.
But change - real connection to the deepest concentration of cells and the substance/essence that can alter the out-product - that is a very rare thing. It certainly isn't happening in a roomful of people where most of their lives is behind them.
Some of us are lucky enough to realize it. Or maybe, unlucky.
Some of us just enjoy the wine. And forget about the details.
