Meaningful Adjacencies
Meaningful Adjacencies
Greg and I were in NYC last weekend to visit family and have some timein the city. One of our stops was the 911 memorial and museum, firsttime for both of us.
“Meaningful adjacencies” was the phrase used to describe how names wereorganized and placed on the panels—the names of all the people who died.Rather than list the names alphabetically, there was an effort toidentify meaningful connections between people, placing side by side thenames of people who in life were linked by something or someone. Notmeaningful relationships per se—in most cases the people didn’tknow one another, but connections that were made later, tracing ways inwhich their lives, loves, work or interests intersected. The tour guidehighlighted just a few of these powerful and moving adjacencies toweave in smaller stories of shared humanity. These adjacencies create aprecious sense of interconnectedness that helps offset the yawning senseof grief, loss and despair reflected in the crashing water andbottomless abyss around which the memorial is designed.
That phrase, “meaningful adjacencies” stayed with me through our time inthe city and has continued to haunt me back at home. Riding the subwaylater that day, observing other riders, the huge variety of humanitythat inhabits a city subway car or city block on any given afternoon, Iwondered if meaningful adjacencies aren’t happening all the time, witheach person we meet or pass. In a city like NYC the prospect isdaunting, overwhelming, but also strangely comforting. We can’t alwayspoint to a specific quality or event that connects us, but if someonehad to make a connection between any two people, put their names on awall and honor their memory by creating a kind of mystic joinery inorder to lift the experience of tragedy or loss out of its ownloneliness...surely we can always find something?
I kept noticing (covertly) the people we passed. The older man in thecorner of the train muttering to himself and clearly mentally adrift,and the younger man nodding his head to music but periodically glancingover to notice him....the two young women on the subway bench, a littlegirl of 3 or 4 nestled between them with her legs crossed up on thebench, chattering away to her stuffed bunny, while the 2 women smiled ateach other with a kind of parental knowing. I find back home that I amnoticing people I pass, in the coop or driving or on the street, andwondering what narrative we could create to link our lives. I find I ammore aware.
I am reminded that each person who comes to the studio, unrolls theirmat, and begins to practice yoga has a story, many stories. We areprobably, all of us who share yoga in that space, connected in ways noneof us consciously realize. Though we practice "on our own mat" and inour own bodies, can we try and also honor the delicate threads of lifeand love and loss and happenstance that connect us?
I think so.
Love,
Leslie