MOVING BEYOND AWARENESS

• March 9, 2021

“Who you are is Connection.”

I was trying to remind myself of the truth that had been reflected to me when I took on the practise of asking people what I brought into the space. People had shared that I brought everyone together. The whole room became more connected when I was a part of it.

But I didn’t usually feel like a connection. I felt shy. I felt like an ambivert — a contorted attempt to combine both introversion and extroversion into a satisfying description of myself. I felt like ignoring people, hiding away, and finding ways to take comfort in the lack of connection that was often more present in my life.

I was trying to remind myself of who I was, or at least, got to be, while waiting at the bus stop.

Ben and someone else stood about ten feet away from me, waiting for the same bus I was, chatting with each other and laughing. I knew Ben vaguely from a stint I’d done at the free legal clinic. We didn’t really know each other. We just went to the same law school and had interacted once.

And here I was, standing off to the side, putting a lot of my attention into my phone.

If I was Connection, why was I avoiding it so much?

Ugh.

I was avoiding it because I was scared. Nervous, I’d be an imposition, not wanting to interrupt into a conversation, not wanting to be some dork that injected himself.

All really valid reasons to stay quiet and nice and off to the side.

What I noticed is that those reasons were always valid. Like, every time I thought of doing something different, those were the reasons I had, and they pretty much always won the day.

I wanted to create something different, but I was scared. What I wanted was a different experience of who I was as a human being. I wanted to live up to the promise that people had reflected on me. But… you know — being a dork, being an interruption, etc. All of that stuff just hung there in the space for me.

“I should go and say hi,” I thought to myself, then got really interested in my phone again.

I spent the next fifteen minutes idly checking my phone, trying to ignore my thoughts, and simultaneously getting distracted by them telling me what I should do in the face of my fear. I re-read the same paragraph for the next fifteen minutes.

And then the bus arrived, and all of us waiting got on the bus.

And I swallowed, and I walked to the back of the bus, and I said, “Ben, right?”

And he looked at me quizzically, and said “Yah?”

“I’m Adam — we did a few hours together at the legal clinic.”

“Oh, right, yeah, I remember.”

He introduced me to his friend, and we started talking.

And that was the moment when my practice went from being something intellectual to something embodied.