The Space Between

Another shift done. It’s good to be back again.

There’s a huge difference between theory and practice, between reading something and living it. I’ve been really enjoying John Swinton’s book on Dementia - but am enjoying even more the chance to be with people who are living with it.

Was reading a section today on the damage individualism has done. How it can subtly sow a view of others as “value-neutral objects for the projects and intentions of the self”. How “Other as Other” becomes lost as we instead begin to see them as “Other-for-me”.

No wonder so many people are lonely.

2 of my favourite words in the English language are “we” and “ours”...it’s the language of belonging. There’s freedom when the focus is taken off the “I”. As Martin Buber puts it:

“Rather, it is the intersubjectivity of what occurs between the “I” and the “Thou” which is the focus; the “I” and the “Thou” come together to form the “We” in the space between.”

A space where there can be “being” without “knowing” in cognitive ways. A space of relating and closeness, without rationalising and conceptualising.

And yet it only begins to make sense when it’s lived. I love the ideas this book brings. But far better than ideas, is getting to share in relationship with others. To see them, hold them, remember them, be with them, and love them for them, rather than for their relational utility.