It’s only natural

Photo credit: Booker T. Sessoms, 2022

This week I unexpectedly added 13,000 kilometers to my travel-log. I don’t mind telling you, it was a jolt. Quite apart from the distance and the potential for jet lag, traveling that far takes time. Time I hadn’t counted on using in that particular way: folded up in a metal box with multiple restrictions on movement and activities.

It also felt particularly jolting in the current context. I boarded the flight with rumors of new bombings and landed with the certainty of more war.

None of this is natural.

That’s the thought that repeatedly flowed through me as I sat in silence this morning. It’s the thought that kept coming back to me during my morning asana practice.

It’s not natural: it is not, truly, how we are meant to relate.

I know, of course, that something being natural doesn’t necessarily mean it is “good.” The desire for revenge is natural, for example, and if you have spent any time in the United States, you’ll know that revenge is the worst possible organizing principle for a justice system to deliver, well, justice.

But at the end of the we are built for connection, for dreaming, for hope. We want to love each other. We want to be loved.

And it is this longing that makes us want to grow roots and stay rooted. It is this longing that requires us to dehumanize ourselves before we can engage in war. We simply cannot destroy each other without first destroying ourselves. At the end of the day, that’s what “love thy enemy” is truly about: it’s not about forgiveness so much as it is about returning to ourselves.

Nature will be nature. Some day we will return to ourselves. Some day we will know with our bodies that war isn’t right.