The People Are A Temple
October 26, 2021 | By Jadan Anderson MC ‘22
Pictured: three lit candles
And souls are candles, each lighting the other.
I read this short poem by Gennady Aygi, a Russian poet, in a class where I had hoped to build substantial relationships with my classmates as we discussed faith through the lens of poetry, and vice versa. Surprisingly, I’ve been building those relationships even more in my introductory Chinese class, in between our bad third tones and character-related short-term memory loss.
After a whole year more or less stuck inside of our houses and in the same small friend groups, I’m back to classes and many extracurricular or even community-oriented (that is, primarily focuses on building edifying interpersonal relationships among the group’s members) organizations; yet I am surprised to find myself still feeling isolated. A few times this semester, I’ve even felt more isolated than I did last year. What gives?
I think there are two things going on here. The first is that I have become more quickly drained by social interaction. After a year out of practice, is anyone surprised? That energy drain is significant enough that, at some point this semester, I forgot I prefer investing in my relationships over extended periods of time alone. When I am alone for long enough, I realize I feel lonely. Despite that, I still find myself holing away in my room. I am slow to arrive and speedy-quick to leave extracurricular meetings, parties, and other social events – even church.
The second element in my feeling of isolation is my assumption that connectedness comes from proximity. If I surround myself with people who like and care about the same things I do, a community of sorts often does form around the group’s mission. Yet, it rarely uses that common mission as a launching pad for relationships amongst community members, which I desire most. For this kind of community, presence is necessary but not sufficient. It takes intentional extra energy.
But not too much extra. (At least for me, it’s often the case that the energy it takes to fret about the next thing on my schedule is far greater than the energy it takes to fully engage in the present.) After several weeks of running straight out of my campus ministry’s weekly meeting, I finally stuck around and asked the person sitting near me, “How are you?” Her vague description gave way to a burst of tears. As she cried, I held her, and we talked for a long while after that about our respective challenges and fears. The experience wasn’t tiring, like I had convinced myself such an experience would be. Though “emotional energy” is spoken of as a scarce resource to be sparingly used, my half-engaged interactions are what drains me; fully engaged interactions are energizing. This moment was an example: despite the sad and stressful circumstances, it was the first time this semester, in that space, that I felt the full and purpose of community momentarily realized.
Here is a list of four things I am committing to doing after October break. My hope is that these practices are practices for more frequent, full engagement. I hope that they help me remember my love for the people around me. If this post has been relatable to you, then you might consider adopting a few of these for yourself as well.
Show up prepared to actively participate. Be consistent in the spaces and with the people I have chosen to dedicate my time to. The frequency with which I show up for anything is, unsurprisingly, positively correlated to my love and care for it. Yet I have also found that when I don’t show up, I forget my love for the thing.
Ask the people next to me—especially if they are people I don’t know or don’t know as well—how they are; or, otherwise, try to start a conversation, build a rapport that I can return to in future meetings. This is like creating a smaller but familiar and easy space, for me and the other person or people, within our larger, shared space.
Regularly reflect about myself. For me, more self-awareness often leads to me acting in greater kindness toward others, because I am better able to recognize their feelings and desires as ones that we share, and I want to address theirs with empathy.
Pray for my extracurriculars and the people in them. Praying makes me more aware of two things: First, outside of the organization’s mission, God has a mission for the organization. Second, God has placed me, along with the people beside me, in this organization, at this specific time for His specific purposes. Regardless of whether or not I know explicitly God’s purpose for a specific group, that He has one is enough to remind me to pay attention not just to the end product, but the relationships that can be formed through the process.
For someone — you, me, anyone — to not feel isolated when surrounded by others takes but one person lighting the other. The little energy we have to ask “How are you?,” can be enough to create a spark for the person next to us. That this is true is God’s grace.