Rewired

Written by Vanessa Anderson

I am overdue on a few articles – this seems to be how I roll on any number of things these days. On this one, in particular, though I have a valid reason (so they all say!).

I wanted it to be light and positive and truth be told, I just wasn’t feeling any of those things. This probably echoes true for many people these days. If it resonates with you, then I want to reassure you and encourage you to honour your feelings, they have a message or a lesson to share. Sometimes the journey they take us on is painful and hard to bear, remember to breathe.

When the world outside our consciousness feels too heavy to bear, from pain or anxiety and even through anger, we tend to hold our breath as if awaiting on external forces to reset the situation. In that moment, without conscious thought we are actually holding on, holding in, and holding fast to the very thing that is holding us back.

Our connection has been brutally severed over time, sped up through recent events and I am convinced that the heavy feeling we are experiencing has its root cause wrapped tightly around the disconnect, isolation and dissent that has been allowed to flourish lately.

In a time before…I won’t set the date but let’s put it at the time before humanity cultivated crops and settled cattle. A great civilization is under construction. There are many hands and innovation is in its infancy. It falls on the backs of many to lift, carry and with great care place the cornerstones of humanity’s future. Under that care, a hand slips and the bedrock breaks, a crumbling remnant falls on the shoulders of one person and they struggle to keep their balance and hold the line. They become separated, disconnected and for a fleeting moment they feel alone – the weight of eternity on their shoulders. Under that weight they cannot see the impact of the disaster on the others, they are unaware that others too have faltered, broken apart still cradling their burdens – weighted further by their sense of responsibility to the whole.

This is where we are now at – seemingly alone – still trying to cradle the greater share of the burden because of our responsibility to the whole. This is why the world seems heavy, too much to bear and why the light feels so dim.

I believe… in helping hands.

If you are a fan of fantasy, then perhaps you know of the movie The Labyrinth. If so, you know all about helping hands – they are found in some of the least likely of places – all you have to do is ask and believe.

I implore you to believe.

Underneath the masks and the fear is isolation and disconnection.

We are a whole in disconnect, particles of light slowly dimming in the swirling outer whorls of a momentum not of our creation. We still feel the responsibility to carry the burden of the whole, feeling isolated. But and it’s a big BUT – there are others, there always have been, we have independently grown resilient and stronger.

It is no wonder, no fault and no mistake that we are who we are and where we are right now. We must simply decide and move forward with clarity and confidence.

I believe, like neurons rewiring and reconnecting, we are reaching out, finding help in unlikely places. We are made of light, we sparkle and shine, we glow when we are loved, connected and in balance, our foothold may have been shaken but in unity we find a sure grasp.

It is time to grow our humanity.

Connection Lost … Reboot by Vanessa Anderson

Time, the one thing we surely did not need to stockpile, yet unlike the dwindling ingredients in my grocery cupboard rendering me dumbstruck come supper time, the minutes, hours and days are abundant. We are all starting to feel a little frazzled by the confines of our four walls and even our animals are starting to wonder just when they will be able to claim back the daylight hours of our home for themselves. The honeymoon phase of endlessly trailing us to the kitchen for titbits and sharing sunny slumber spots is wearing thin with the increase in tummy tickles and shrieking laughter from those youthful inmates trying to amuse themselves.

As we enter the second week of lockdown I am sure that we are all suffering from some lack of connectivity, whether it is the faces of our friends and family, or our colleagues or even the teacher at our children’s school. Those encounters, once trivial in their frequency now a distant shimmering oasis in this desert of human connectivity we find ourselves wandering in.

The very thing that shall save us, being the one thing we have evolved to depend on – being connected. I mused at the beginning of it all about how distance was the global savior of those who lost their lives to pandemics throughout history. Distance because exposure was limited by trade routes, and relatively easy to contain geographically.

The world we live in today is so very different, with its high speed internet access and satellite images that have made the world we live in that much smaller, that much more accessible. I am not going to knock the connectedness of our electronic age. It is the same creature that will help us to connect to our loved ones across continents and oceans during this time, help us to continue working so that we can ease the economic recession, help us share information and uplift others who are finding negativity in these dark spaces. It has a purpose and for that we should be grateful.

No, time was certainly not on my shopping list as I prepared for this lockdown, but you know what has crept onto it – data, connection to source. Those first few days spent anxiously watching the data donut dolefully drudge across my screen, then disappear as I lost connection. I needed to work you see, I needed to share information with people for work – it was important and I was letting the team down and the more anxious and angry I got the slower the donut drudged.

You see there is something you should know about me – I don’t get along well with electronics. I don’t wear a watch – they tend to lose time, or stop working altogether.  I can literally feel the IT technicians cringe when they have to hear me out as I describe some weird thing my computer just did. I have an auto electrician on speed dial because my car’s radio, battery, lights….the list goes on, tends to act up regularly. I try to stay away from electronics but I also have a job to do.

So here’s what I have only just learnt.

When the connection was lost, I shut down the computer, switched off the wifi and went outside, I sat in the garden with my cats and talked to my children, I took out my paints and finished my artwork, I watered my seedlings. I acknowledged the connection with self, the connection with source and rewired.

It’s a funny thing, even though we have come so far, spread across continents, traversed oceans… evolved. There is one connection we have never lost, even though we lost sight of if, even if the donut was dwindling on its edge about to tip over, we never lost connection to source and time, even though it was not on my shopping list is the one thing I never want to be without again.