How often we are truly together? Most people communicate through the thick walls of their inner thoughts. Their tongues and mouths move and shape their voice into a string of words, but they are not with each other. Each hides inside his or her own head, wrapped securely in one’s own thoughts.
If you were fortunate to meet someone who truly listens, who gives you their undivided attention, who soaks in your words and who is so similar to you that he or she inspires a similar openness in you, then you know the feeling. Being in a special bubble of true togetherness is like taking a breath of crisp fresh air after being locked in a small meeting room with too many people for way too long. It is like taking a drink from a pristine mountain stream. It is a special feeling of being alive.
Perhaps great speakers and entertainers feel this, when they look into a room, full of people, and see them all being on the edge of their seats, eyes open, faces attentive, soaking every words, fully opening their hearts and minds. The feeling of togetherness, the feeling of flow. It can be so addictive. It can get you high.
Yet the joy of being truly open and truly together is trampled by fear. There is a fear of being rejected, of being misunderstood, of being too bold, too different, too smart, too assertive, too forward, too emotional. If you have a speech impediment, such as a stutter, you may be afraid that your ideas, your stories, your feelings will be discarded because of the way you express them. We wrap our gifts in pretty paper and add some colorful ribbons to make them look better. We do the same with our ideas – we want to wrap them nicely. If you stutter, it is quite challenging.
Fear creates barriers. And barriers prevent flow. The more barriers we create, the more we deprive ourselves of an amazingly revitalizing experience of true togetherness. The more we hide behind the walls of thoughts, the more difficult it is for other people to truly hear us and understand how we feel and what we want to express. And yes, if you are a person who stutters, it makes it much worse.
Some people are more afraid of strangers and some people are more afraid of people who are important to them.
This is why when you meet someone who makes you feel safe enough to remove the barriers and leave the safety of your thoughts, with whom you suddenly find it possible to be fully present and fully immersed into the richness of the present moment, with whom you can be truly together, it feels like magic.