Togetherness

'We are pushed into a lot of phoney 'togetherness' that I resent. But there is a real being-together that no one has to be pushed into because it springs immediately from ourselves.'

- Barry Stevens

I have been reading - as one does on days off when tasks of real substance have all been completed. I have been reading about human beings. About being real, being present, being open-minded. Just 'being'. Even just learning to 'be' is an art that is ironically not as simple as it seems, yet when mastered, it acts as an opening to a new part of the world that is a never ending land of process and life... It can make being with others something of a real encounter rather than a forced attempt at conversation or a self-defeating interaction in which one person adapts their being in efforts to meet their perceived 'expectations' of the other, and vice versa. Or alternatively, perhaps the one we might be least aware of ourselves, we attempt to hide or mask the parts of ourselves that we dislike - the parts we fear others will reject. This extract is a nice way of illustrating that ironically, learning to 'be' can produce the most energy and movement, simply because we are no longer trying to be anything other than who we already are.