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My truth is that we are all inherently interconnected. What this means to me is that there is more to existence than what lies between the corners of my own mind, identities, body and spirit. There is a far larger ecosystem of life outside of what I’ve chosen to define as “me”, or what is true in my individual awareness. On a basic level, interconnection represents the point of intersection between more than one thing. It acknowledges the presence of a more expansive body or network existing around any one object, person, moment, or place. Tapping into the interconnectivity of life acknowledges that life as we know it does not revolve around any single one of us, nor any single culture, geography, or ethos. We are interconnected through the systems that we accept and that rule us; the language that binds us to the same understanding of a shared reality; the impact we are able to have over one another; in relationships, in politics, in the seemingly random transactions with a stranger. As a curious creature by nature, the blessing of this thirst for understanding has taken my life through space and places of wide range. It’s also brought me to contexts far from the ways I was raised and nurtured, with the privilege to move around the world with relative ease and access. As a Thai born and raised daughter of Iranian Immigrants, I navigated sitting within spaces of ambiguity early on. I have moved on to live, study and work in places including the UAE, USA and Singapore, where I found myself struggling and learning to navigate this space of co-existing while not quite fitting in. It allowed me to gain exposure to a wide range of communities within each context and I remain intentional about understanding the sociological landscape within each place, paying attention to the dynamics of race, socioeconomic access and religious influence in particular. I am grateful for the courage to stretch my zones of familiarity and connect with those of a different paradigm all together, and each time I realize how much farther I can expand my range of critical thinking, compassion, humility and acceptance. While I may have had little choice on what went into building the world that I am inheriting, I do have choice in how I participate in the evolution of it. I can choose to trust in my fellow beings and our ability to recognize the ultimate connection that we all have, the bond of survival, these shared threads of connection in the larger tapestry of humanity. Every word I choose to spell out touches you whether you do something with it or not. Our actions matter, and we move along with the ripple of this larger ocean that binds us together. There is no escaping that. What I’ve consistently learned as I move through the human library, is that we are all experiencing multiple things at once, and oftentimes many similar things in different ranges or stages. In each of these incredibly different environments, I’ve lived for a stretch of a few years at least and I was in a unique place in my own journey, finding more of a place in my own body and the world around me. I continue to meet new faces and build relationships more deeply as I know myself better, and I am frequently reminded that everyone comes with their own version of the world within them. I’ve grown to appreciate the mutual threads of life experience that show up in the safety of vulnerability. Friends falling in love, facing mental health struggles, or trying to make sense of where they're going. Others, meeting the realities of deep grief because of a death or loss of a significant community. I remind myself when encountering another person that they are rarely, if ever, sharing all of what is alive in their world. I believe in empathy and its power to bring us closer in intimacy with one another, to build bridges of connection and awareness between us. Empathy allows us to know one another more deeply, more willingly, more openly. As a former intercultural educator, I facilitated dialogue circles with students of different backgrounds and representation across the spectrum of certain identity markers like spirituality/religion, race/ethnicity or gender. Again and again, I witnessed moments where a student listening to another from a completely different background would respond with an element of surprise, a newfound and often humbling awareness, where they were recognizing another person experiencing the world in a different way than they were. I would hear things like “I didn’t know you had to think about that on a daily basis” or “I’d never really questioned why we were taught to believe these stereotypes and that it might not be true.” I saw students later integrate this in further sessions and within the community; they would pause before reacting and not assume another person’s expression was a personal attack, they would ask questions to understand where certain emotions or assumptions were coming from, and they would allow space to be proven wrong and place this learning into intentional action within their homes, community organizations and classrooms. I am hopeful that we have the capacity to grow toward a collective orientation where empathy is the norm. Where children are raised to cultivate this early on, to feel and see those around them, and accept a world much larger than their own. I think about what it could look like if we as a society cultivated more collaboration in this realm of interconnectivity, how we could thrive as communities not by competing but by sharing. The pandemic has left no one untouched, some more than others, and there are questions to ask around why that is. Still, we each in our own ways have been connected to this collective experience that has shaken up the planet. In this era more than others in my own lifetime, I find it hard to deny the many ways we are interconnected. I see how much this awareness can serve us, particularly in difficult times as we try to put the puzzle pieces together. I trust that I am one part of a larger movement, and that my efforts and yours matter, however we choose to walk ourselves forward. I trust in the inherent ways that we love, the ways that we desire connection and wish to belong. May this shared thread push us to take action in ways that build bridges, that include and nourish others, and teach others to do the same. I thank you for receiving my words, dear reader, and hope it has invited a part of you to tap into a space of this trust. Somewhere inside you, in all of us, holds a capacity to remain connected, connected to ourselves and what lives around us. Reach out to those you meet with care and with heart, and welcome the vulnerability it takes to allow yourself to belong to the world around you. It requires bravery to trust, and it requires resilience to stay in trust. May you be well.
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