You lie in your bed. It has been a day full of activity, at the end of which we should all be sleepy, ready for rest. And yet you stare up at me, eyes wide, every muscle of your seven year-old body clearly alert.
“I feel weird,” you say.
“Tell me more.”
You explain. The universe is so large, you say. You are small. We are small. You are thinking about vastness, and your mind, you tell me, feels like it is floating somewhere outside your body, carried away by the enormity of it all.
As you stare at me, eyes wide and beseeching, I remember. I remember my own small bed, a four-poster battered old antique no doubt unearthed from one of my grandparents’ homes. I remember lying quite still as thoughts poured through my own little body: the universe, my smallness, the fact that I could never know exactly what it felt like to be any other member of my family, regardless of our closeness. My grandmother: gone, but where? Time: flashing by, but what did it even mean?
I pull myself back to this moment, to you in your bed, your own mind blown wide open, and to myself, decades older, a different relationship with the vastness now.
I want to give you the gift of those years. I want to share that the vastness no longer frightens me with its unknowability. I want you to feel the grace contained within smallness. I want to explain the sheer relief that can come with knowing we are but a part of something beyond both control and comprehension.
But only time can teach us this: the vastness can be the source of our holding. In the moments when I felt most alone and like I was coming undone, the feeling of my back against a tall pine, the knowledge of roots intertwining deep within the soil, the presence of thousands of creatures sharing the forest around me, and the many, many stars in a clear night sky have all provided profound relief. Something about the continuing pulse of existence, far beyond the confines of my physical limitations and even beyond the capacity of my comprehension has soothed me to the core and nestled me deep in a sense of belonging.
For now, I tell you this: there is nothing “weird” about what you are feeling. Our minds, typically tethered to the smaller thoughts and concerns of our daily lives, blow wide open when encountered with the vastness of existence. It can be uncomfortable at first. But do not run. Let your mind be blown open, and, so too, your heart.
This openness will sometimes make your heart ache. But it also contains the deepest connection you can possibly know. Open, you will never be alone.
Perfect. “Open, you will never be alone.”