A few weeks ago, I had the incredible luxury of spending the afternoon with friends I met in September of 1956, on our first day of kindergarten. I’ve known them for almost seventy years.
We don’t get to see each other that often, but when we do, I always have the same experience. I lose all consciousness of myself as a separate self with no inherent connection to everyone else. I’m no longer just me. I’m instantly basking in the glow of “us” and “we.”
To be fair, this happens to me more and more often, regardless of who I’m with. It happens because I let it happen by not doing anything to stop it. In other words, I no longer cut myself off from other people by feeling that, in some way, I have to protect myself from them, or feel I have to leave them with a certain impression. There’s simply nothing to protect, and nothing to project. Nothing to defend, nothing to pretend.
Having spent most of my life doing what most of us do, protecting and projecting, it’s clear to me just how much sheer joy I missed. The joy of really losing yourself in the company of people, whether or not you’re related, whether or not you even know them, is a joy that defies description, but one that defines peace, well-being, and happiness.
Protecting and projecting, defending and pretending, take an enormous amount of mental energy, or thinking.
When you’re that lost in thought about every move you make, every sentence you speak, you can’t really be present in your own experience. It’s another reminder that you can’t really think about yourself and be yourself at the same time.
As a result, on some level, it almost feels like you’re not having the experience you’re having. You’re absent from your own life because you’re thinking too much about the experience you’re having.
The sort of overthinking I’ve just described is 180 degrees removed from the experience of just living your life without you on your mind most of the time. Going through life with myself as the main topic on my mind was the way I lived for most of my long life. If only I’d known what my being lost in my thoughts so much of the time, cost me! At the time, I knew nothing about the nature of thought, which is why my difficulty arose.
Once I learned that the nature of thought is always neutral, over time, the “difficulty” I’d always had around being with other people eased up because I was taking my own thinking so much less seriously.
Now, being with people, whether or not I know them, seems like the most natural thing in the world, which is exactly what it is.
I can’t tell for sure how much of my discomfort was visible to people who are used to being around me, because I was quite good at hiding it from everyone. (Except myself, of course.) My guess is, because I’m showing up differently, the people I’m with are having a different experience too.
What a gift it is to be released from the mistaken belief that I have to believe and take seriously every thought I have! The same joy I felt with my kindergarten pals is available to me now, no matter who I’m with. What could possibly be nicer than that?
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