Communal Working/Living

One of the great energizing factors of The Grand Adventure has been moving into a space where there are multiple people. For most of you, I suspect, a moment or place with more isolation would be a joy. But I have spent much of the last decade alone on a daily basis. I work in people's homes caring for their children and streamlining and supporting their situations.

Here, for the first time in ages, people pass in casual contact. Getting lost in my thoughts, focusing on my work and getting things done all become more plausible because of the internal push against the limits of those casual contacts.

Yet, I am grateful for the thousands of hours I have spent alone in previous days. It gave me a chance to truly experience myself as a separate entity in the world. As the third of four children, married at 21 the day before graduation from college and mother of four, 'alone' was not anything I thought I would ever experience for any extended time period.

Now, with the functions of my life separated into work, personal life, possessions and travel, I carry a consistency of self throughout the days that used to be a bit transitory depending on how I was reacting to my environment. I am, in fact, living life from the inside out.

Iron does indeed sharpen iron and I find, for all that I have been through, I am stronger for it and clearer about who I am for it.

That means one very good thing. I project much less of my own unconscious baggage on the world. The alone time has meant I have become very much more aware, more conscious. The benefit continues as I reconnect with people ten fold in the hours of my days. I am truly able to see them as they are rather than through too drastic a filter. I can see the unhappy ones, the peaceful ones, the satisfied and the discontent as well as those who are presently unconscious for who they are and have a stronger encounter for it.

At night, when I am alone, truly alone in the car with the world only inches, not a hallway or a staircase, from my life and my experience, I can savour the 'me' of life resting, truly resting to absorb today and prepare for tomorrow.

I like it.