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You’re Not Alone

Yesterday, I spent over an hour on the phone with a family friend I’ve known for nearly 40 years. She and I are the oldest sibling in our respective families, we’re both unmarried, both have had career setbacks, both are going through physical illnesses that we’re trying to resolve, both are of the “Brahmin” caste of India (whose traditional roles were being priests, teachers and healers), both are computer programmers that had to change careers, both found solace in religions other than what we were born into, both have felt the need to conduct physical journeys to find ourselves, both have always been philosophers, and both feel like our parents don’t understand our spiritual choices, to the point of both being criticized for our decisions.

And yet, we haven’t seen each other in nearly 20 years, and rarely see each other in general because of our original geographic distance. It seems odd that despite being disconnected with each other, that we have gone down such similar paths. Although she has gone further in her spiritual development than I have, and has already had “mountain-top retreats” three times while I have only been to Atlanta, Georgia, and missed my “music pilgrimage” to Tennessee.

As I’ve mentioned in one of my early posts, I Would Walk 500 Miles, nine years ago, I had a plan to walk around the world for ten years. Now I’m only partly surprised to find that my family friend and “cultural sister” actually started her journey at around the same time that I would have started mine.

I think that this just goes to show that even when you think that you are undergoing some extremely unique pain, that there might be somebody that you already know going through a similar experience. And this someone might just be in tune with you and able to commiserate. Sharing your stories may be able to help you both heal. But as I say in MyEver-Changing Moods, always keep in mind that in any relationship, whether platonic or otherwise, one person needs the other person more. Sharing stories does not mean that you both speak equally. Rather I mean sharing in a more general sense. Listening is sometimes as much as healing force.