My cat Boca is a one-woman cat, and I’m that woman. The deal is that he doesn’t sleep with any other people, and I don’t sleep with any other cats. The downside is that he’s not much on the cuddling stuff, except when he feels like it of course. He may look like a soft furry pillow, but resting my head on his tummy generally causes him to move to the other side of the bed.

Fortunately, our dispositions are pretty well matched, but it’s not so easy when it comes to people. Most of my friends, being extroverts, get their energy from the people around them. Acquaintances often mistake my outgoing personality for extroversion, but it’s all a disguise; it is the solitary life that emboldens me. It’s not the kind of thing that I’d admit in gentle society because I’m apt to be lumped in with the hatchet murderers and mail bombers, introverts all. But there is another realm of quiet souls, people for whom groups sap the spiritual and physical energy. All those faces. All that cocktail conversation. All that hugging. It’s darn tiring.

For us, the elemental self blooms when we are alone. Not distracted by the series of someones who need something. Talk to me. Pay attention to me. Listen to me. Spirit cannot compete with a maelstrom of demands. Only in the quiet of a forest laden with pine needles or in the curl of smoke from a bilberry candle can spirit slip from the shadows and revel, unencumbered.

At the most fundamental level, we are affected by the presence of others. It’s not that I become someone different, but there is a subtle shift that makes me not quite my true self, the self present in solitude. That shift allows me to respond to questions. To move over when someone needs space. To pass the salt shaker when someone reaches. Small things.

My friend Amy’s shift is far more pronounced, particularly when men enter the room. She looks up prettily, crosses her legs, and fluffs her hair. Us gals laugh at what it says about her relationship with men, but the truth is, we are all affected by others entering our space. Not just on the superficial level of looking prettier for some guy, but deep down in the quiet space where God resides.

To deny our effect on others is to deny our responsibility to ourselves, to change our universe by actions that may not show up on the tree-hugger/baby seal rescuer scale. At the end of life it won’t matter if the house was spotless every day. It won’t matter if the gutters weren’t cleaned out for the season. It won’t matter if that project went to the printer a day late. It will matter that you listened when your friend cried. It will matter that you didn’t rush when you told your son a bedtime story. It will matter that you told your mother that you loved her before she died.

During this lifetime, I will close the circle between me and spirit, and me and thou, like a yin and yang of communion. I will give myself time to be with spirit and to be with others in a way that strengthens and encourages their being. I will work a little harder to see the goodness in every person, even the ones I don’t like, especially the ones I don’t like. I will be present to the spirit within me. I will.

Copyright January, 1999