I'll never forget a brief encounter with someone a few years ago.
I was on the way to one of my college classes, in a somewhat busy hallway, and my eyes happened to fall on this girl walking from the opposite direction towards me. Her eyes were mostly downcast, body language closed off, and there almost seemed to be a dark cloud around her. I could sense how lonely she was inside, yet the walls and barricades she had put up around herself were high. It served as some sort of repellent- I found myself wanting to reach out to this lonely girl with maybe a simple smile or hello, but I could tell that everything around and within her would not be receptive to this gesture. This barricade was also apparent by the way that everyone else ignored or distanced themselves from this girl as they walked by.
I couldn't get this person off my mind for quite some time, and after a while I had realized that I saw many aspects of myself in this girl. She served as a mirror for the way that I've behaved in my social environment- closed off, shut down, and unreceptive to basic human connection. I could clearly see that these actions created negative results from the people that came into contact with me- this realization was magnified by my own experience with this girl. I stayed away from her not because of who she was, but because of how she was behaving. I stayed away from her not because of any flaws or misgivings in her character, or because I thought she was weird, but simply because I could sense that she wanted to be left alone.
It saddened me to realize that perhaps the way other people have responded to her body language and actions continued to reinforce the belief that she was unworthy of love and connection. It saddened me to realize that perhaps there was an aspect of her so desperately afraid of feeling old pain of rejection and abandonment that the only way to feel safe was to continue to isolate and keep people at an arms length.
I learned a lot from this brief encounter- it magnified an important lesson in my own journey with loneliness. These experiences continued to become perpetuated by my own actions, not necessarily because people were continuing to reject who I was as a person. How could they have known who I was if I never even let them in?
It's easy to forget that the way we behave is largely driven by our earliest childhood experiences, conditioning, wounding, and traumas. These experiences create belief systems and thought patterns, many of them limiting, constricting, and not conducive to our wellbeing. We act out our beliefs in conscious and unconscious ways, usually resulting in similar consequences which reinforce these existing beliefs. Usually it takes many years, and sometimes a whole lifetime, to realize that we are playing out a role that was imprinted on us, not necessarily reflecting an objective reality of who we are and the life we could lead.
It takes courage to dive deep into our constricting patterns and reframe these outdated modes of perceiving and interacting with the world. We may find that we constructed a life reflecting only a small fragment of what we could become and how healthfully and joyfully we could live. We may find that the reality we see before us is not necessarily an objective perception, but one unconsciously filtered through pain, suffering, and subjective experiences. We may find that we do have a responsibility to continuously question these narratives we find ourselves partaking in, ones that contribute to cycles of suffering, disempowerment, and imprisonment.
Questioning, healing, and reframing these patterns may open up new doors, new experiences, and completely new ways of living. Passivity can become proactivity, loneliness can become connection, apathy can become inspiration.
I still have a long ways to go in embracing these important lessons. However, realizing the level of power we carry in rewriting old stories is something that I thank this stranger for teaching me.
I wish her happiness, wholeness, healthiness, and connection.
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