It is hard sometimes not to get annoyed with other people. A lot of us really don't seem to have a clue, the way we wander and stumble around as though we are the only ones in the universe. That kind of self-absorption seems quite rampant. That is why I still make an effort to engage with strangers every day, even if it's just saying hi to some random person on the sidewalk. It is still human contact. It helps draw us both out of ourselves. It helps pull our heads out of our heinies. There are of course places where I wish I was the only human present. The Stanley Park Seawall, for example or anywhere in the forest. There is nothing that can so wreck for me what should be a quiet and solitary hike as two or three people on the trail yapping behind me, as occurred today for a brief while. Usually I simply stand aside, wait for them to pass, then slowly resume my journey till they are well out of sight.
Yes, I know that seems antisocial, but let me explain. Not a lot of people go into the forest with the express purpose of encountering and celebrating, apart from birdsong and the calls of ravens and eagles, the silence of nature. A lot of people are afraid of that, which is why so many won't venture anywhere outside, not even out into nature, without their precious little earbuds, or, much worse, carrying their own little ghetto blaster with them. We must be safe, you know, from the sounds of nature, and especially from the terrifying silence of our own inner void. So, Gentle Reader, you will understand why I can find the presence of others in the forest jarring or annoying. Because they simply are jarring and annoying.
However, were I to trip and sprain my ankle, or worse, break an arm or a leg, what would I do with no one around to help me? And I still say hi to random strangers I meet on the trail, but I do draw the line at being followed. The fact of the matter is, despite our often legitimate need for solitude, we humans are a social animal. We are wholly social. Our survival depends on one another. Even if we are annoying. Even if hell is other people.
I am reminded here of the spiritual but not religious folk. You know what I mean, what Buddhists, I mean real hardcore Buddhists, sneeringly refer to as "McMindfulness." It's really a consumerist, faux-spirituality, because other people are usually excluded and it's all about personal experience and personal emotional gratification. It is all about self.
By extension, any genuine true, authentic spirituality is going to have to involve other people. We are not on this dear earth simply to love ourselves, darlings! If we are truly spiritual, if we really are in touch with God, or the Universe, or call it what you want, then we are going to have to interact with others. It's unavoidable. It's in the contract. As annoying as we are to one another, and I happen to also know that I can also be very annoying to others, that very annoyance can be the very instrument of grace to draw us closer to God, or at least to teach us some new things about ourselves, which is often the same thing. This is why the letter of James (Santiago in Spanish) is one of my favourite documents in the New Testament. When he writes things like "True religion and undefiled before the father is this: to visit widows and orphans in their distress and keep yourselves unspotted from the world."
It is in our interactions with one another that God really becomes present. It is in one another that we meet Jesus. It is through one another that we learn to love and to be loved. I sometimes tell one of my friends in my frequent emails that I love him. But he also knows that I only want him to return to me no more than ten percent of the love that I send him. I tell him to pass the rest of it on to others. And that is how I seek to walk in a spirit of love, grace, mercy and justice with all of you, my Gentle Reader. Sleep tight!
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