Coming Back from Isolation
By Tim Jackins, from his webinar “Where from Here?” on January 30, 2021
Each of us seems to have been forced into isolation early in our life. The adults around us when we were small had been hurt living in harsh societies. They couldn’t play a role either as counselor or as reference point for us. We looked out and saw no one like us. What we saw were the distresses they wore and the lack of attention it caused. We may have tried for a day or a year, but at some point, we gave up and went away. We were in a rowboat tied to their dock, and we undid the rope and drifted off, trying to figure out what direction to head for.
The same thing had happened to our parents, too, so they couldn’t recognize that it was happening to us. We left, and they didn’t notice that we left. We have all been drifting that way, and because it is such a common chronic pattern, we haven’t recognized it in each other.
So, we never got the chance to learn how to build close relationships with other people in childhood, and we are still there. We look and smile and wave through a plate-glass window, but the idea that we could get closer, or of how to get closer, just isn’t in our minds. We would have had a wonderful time in childhood learning how to do that with each other if there had been enough discharge and resource.
The only hint of this connection I have ever seen is when I did a workshop with twins. They had a connection that I haven’t seen the rest of us have. There is a hint that more is possible. Getting there is a big piece of the work we need to do now. We need to do it for our own minds. We need to do it for our relations with each other. We need to do it to be able to reach people more effectively with RC, so the world can change.
How are we going to build a good society if we cannot think about people? This is not a theoretical problem. We don’t get to sit home alone and figure it out. We have a big piece of work to do—going after [pursuing] each other and trying to reach for each other—and it is not easy. I know your life isn’t comfortable, but it may seem like it in comparison when you try to work on this distress. It can be very uncomfortable to see how hard living in the distress has been for us and to realize the numbness we have had to acquire.
It’s time we all come back. This is our first real chance to do it.
(Present Time 203, April 2021)