We are All in this Together
With all the loss, loneliness, depression and anxiety that has been generated during this pandemic, there is a healing salve, that when apply to our hurting hearts, turns our pain into healing.
The healing salve is the truth that we are all in this together. If you doubt that go check out the books of Brandon Stanton. When he was fired from his job, he took his camera and went out on the streets of New York. His initial goal was to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers but somewhere along the way he began to talk with them and write down their stories.
These photographs and stories showed up in a book called Humans of New York, which was an instant success. He then began traveling the world and his second book, Humans, is a worldwide hit. Even though he was considered a stranger and had to work with the barrier of language in many of the countries, whether he was talking with an addict in Pakistan, a genocide survivor in Rwanda, an Iraqi father who said he would give his soul if he could fix the brain of his disabled daughter, a young woman reeling from a break-up with her fiancé, he was able to connect. As he met them human to human, his core experience was that far more unites us than separates us.
“The one thing that’s indivisible and that everybody feels the same way,” Stanton said, “is pain. If you’re looking across the world at somebody in a village in Africa who just lost their mother and they are expressing that in a very real and authentic way, I don’t care how different the details are, the pain is the same, and you can feel it as you connect with that person.”
His work is a chronicle of what is really going on for all of us underneath a surface glance and not just in this time of Covid-19. It reveals the pain, anxiousness, doubt and struggle we all experience throughout our lives. It is the opposite of everything we broadcast every day, which is our persona – our mask. “I am fine,” says the mask. “I am together even though my heart maybe breaking but I don’t want you to see it.”
Unable to travel and randomly talk to people like Brandon used to during the pandemic, his work is still touching minds and hearts all around the world. Why? Because we need to hear the truth that connection matters; that we are all in this together; that were not alone in our pain.
So, I invite you to really listen to the next person you come across whether it’s your child, somebody sitting across the aisle on the bus, a voice on the other end of the phone. They carry the same pain you do. Go beyond your mind’s illusion that you are separate from this person. Allow your heart to connect with them in the common ground of simply being. Listen with a heart that is willing to meet whatever this human being is expressing, connecting with them in the shared experience of being human.
The more you can meet yourself as you are, the more you can be open to other people, sharing in the essence that is at the core of every single human being. And the more you are open to other people, the more you can simply be open to life. This is the healing which comes from the recognition that we all carry the same pain, that we are all in this together. It may not seem like it, but we are never, ever alone in our pain.
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The art of meeting yourself exactly as you are is one of the core messages in my new book, Falling in Love with You We have received so much positive response that we are rerunning our holiday special for Valentine’s Day. It is so important to love yourself first with your whole being, so you can embrace others with the warmth of your heart.
This is a wonderful little book to share with everyone you love and care about. From now until Valentines Day: buy three Falling in Love with You paperbacks from my website and get a fourth one for free. It will automatically be included in your package.
Falling in Love with You: Nuggets of wisdom for a heartfelt life paperback is available on our website and Amazon paperback & eBook.
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During these challenging times, our compulsions can tend to get more interesting for us. My 8- week interactive online course, Being Healed by Our Compulsions, is beginning on March 31st. Give yourself the gift of transforming your relationship with your compulsion from something that is wrong and needs to be controlled to a doorway that opens into the peace and the ease you long for. Enroll by February 9th and receive $200 off tuition. Use coupon code: comp4$200 Sliding scale also available. Contact devrah@maryomalley.com for more info.