Archives: You are not alone

I think it can be easy to believe the story of our aloneness. Even more so when we’ve been hurt, there becomes a safety in it. This poem is saved on the desktop of my computer, alongside a note to myself, from the first time I discovered or rather, remembered that there is/was/will always be so much more to me than any label or experience. 

Everything is Waiting for You 

By: David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. 

As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. 

To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. 

Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice. 

You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. 

The stairs are your mentor of things to come, the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

At the time, I was existing in some space between life and death, working my way through recovery - a recovery of what exactly - I was not yet quite sure, but something in me knew.

One day, quite suddenly, this other voice appeared in my head. I wrote a note to myself from this voice, all the things I didn’t even know I needed to hear came pouring through. The beginning of a rebuilding of connection, to myself, to life, to a part of me and us that lives within me yet is also much greater than I alone. 

We are never alone. If we put our attention here, we may see - we will see, support is always right here. And, in the midst of healing, allowing people in can be a tender thing. So maybe there’s more space to practice with this where it feels safer. Nature, animals, surroundings. The most magnificent supports, the ones that spark our voice to re-emerge and a return to our knowings, may be in the most subtle yet giant beings.