I'm listening to a podcast that was talking about the feeling you get after just watching a good movie and walking out of a theater. Or reading a good book, or who know, listening to a good audio-drama.
That the real elation isn't just the catharsis of having your feelings evoked, or the inspiration of what you might want to create too. That the elation comes from a shared experience. For a short time, you are experiencing the same things as other people in the world.
You and the other readers, watchers, listeners. There's a sense of oneness that we don't get to have very often. Yet it is what we all seek. If we share, if we're one, then we're not alone, and we're understood. More than anything, baked into our souls, humans want to feel loved, but just as strong and intertwined is wanting to be understood. To feel like we're not alone. That we aren't just huddled in a cave together with strangers, but that we're doing it with people who share the experience, understand us, love us, our friends, our family. Not proximity, oneness.
One of my favorite things is when a band is having a concert and they start playing something none of their fans have ever heard. Then they suddenly switch it from the random notes or fake song and into one of their most beloved hits. The crowd starts confused, then there's that moment where it clicks and they all go fucking wild. They just went on a journey together, oneness. My favorite example if you want to go on the journey too is from Jane's Addiction, the Kettle Whistle live album, Jane Says live.
People experience it at concerts, theaters, churches, political rallies...etc Why do you think people set those things up? Why do so many people go and even get influenced by the flood of oneness?
But I believe it's not just the oneness with others sharing the same experience. Or oneness with the author. I believe it's also oneness with the representations.
How many people my age shared in the grief over artex, the wonder over some kids on bikes, or the wish they could find a world in the back of their closet. Not because of the other people who read it, but because you were there with Atreyu and Bastian, with Elliot and ET, and with the Pevensie siblings.
Sometimes the feeling of never being understood, of not being able to adequately describe your soul to others and knowing they don't really know you. That people could like you, but since you don't feel they understand who you really are, that the like can't really matter. They like the you in their own mind maybe. But not you. That feeling can be so god damned bleak that you just sit and stare at nothing.
But I draw some peace from the fact that likely we all feel that way. That nobody truly understands us, and that nobody would ever really love us if they really understood us. That separation, the need for oneness, drives so much of the world. Including the tendency to hide everything that people might judge you and separate you further because of. Despite the fact that if everyone trying to connect could be honest about their flaws and embarrassing journeys it would increase oneness. We could all see that we are walking messes that we won't even know how to clean up. That's part of our oneness as people.
For now we'll settle for feeling our guts drop and our hearts rise as spiderman learns how to web swing one more freaking time. And we look at the person next to us and at least guess that they are feeling the same thing.
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