How do you live deeply?

This is a new year... and this is my 200th blog post. I thought I would write some thoughts I have had lately to commemorate this momentous occasion.

I have been thinking a lot about how our lives are woven together lately. And about how life is supposed to be lived. How do you live deeply? How can you live deeply when things around you fall apart, or change drastically? How do we keep up? How can life be "good" when you lose someone you care about so much? How can we be happy when we feel so alone?

It seems crazy to me that we can all be so much the same, but try so hard to point out our differences to push us apart. I mean, we are all in this together and we are all trying to figure it out.

I’m convinced that we all want to feel like we’re not alone. I don’t mean that in a spiritual “there-is-a-god” sense, although I think that is a big part of who we are. I’m talking about the longing to feel like we are a part of something. To be interconnected in some way with each other. To know that we aren’t alone in our loneliness. That we aren’t alone in our sadness, and confusion, and doubt. We want our hearts to beat together. We want for our lives to connect and be anchored in someone else. To be understood. To be important. We long for love. We long for someone to desire us and someone to need us. Our vulnerable souls cry out to each other, but our façades of independence muffle the sound.

This world is a broken, bitter, sad place. And we have made it so, but we can fix it.

God gave us each other because we cannot do it alone. I need you. You need me. We need each other. If it wasn’t for each other we wouldn’t be able to walk or talk or learn or grow. If it wasn’t for each other we wouldn’t be able to survive. I am me because of you. You are you because of me. We are us. And we are strong because of each other.

My goal for 2009 is to learn to live deeply... and not so all by myself.