You meet someone for the first time and hear, “How do you do?” This may be accompanied by a polite smile or a nod of the head. It has commonly come to mean, “How are you?” Yet, like the phrase “How’re you doing?” it is curiously couched in the language of what we do as a profession or preferred activity.

After an initial greeting, members of a group usually continues “finding out about each other” by mutually engaging in a swap of information. This is usually a period of time spent talking about the activities they engage in for work or for enjoyment. These introductions become conscious and unconscious tools to establish a social pecking order and alliances within the gathered group.

Whole series of thoughts and feelings are triggered when we hear these definitions about other people. For instance, we may think to ourselves, “Oh, he’s a (insert profession here), they’re all creeps!” On the other hand, if we hear someone identify with a profession we may have longed to enter, we may have feelings of inadequacy or jealousy.

While we may be doing a lot of things in this interchange, we aren’t finding out very much about the person in front of us. Instead, we are making assumptions about each other. These assumptions are largely based on our perceptions about the scraps of information they and we have provided. We may “enhance” these assumptions by evaluating their overall, outward appearance but even at that we are actually just making the person up in our heads!

Wouldn’t it be more refreshing if we introduced ourselves by asking the question “Who are you?” instead of “How are you?” That would certainly give us a lot more information to develop a deeper perspective of each other.

Take a minute to think about how you might respond if you were asked the question, “Who are you?” What would your honest answer be?

As I thought about this myself, I wondered if there wasn’t some kind of universal human greeting that could be used to start out our conversation. It could be something like the following:

“Hello. I am known as (chosen name).
My soul entered this world (your age) years ago.
During the time I’ve been here I’ve been gaining lots of experiences.
I’ve used my senses, my thoughts and my emotional body to explore my world.
I have sometimes been hurt through these explorations and I have also had some truly wonderful moments.
I’ve made a lot of choices while I’ve been here, both consciously and unknowingly.
Some of these choices have brought me great joy.
Other times I have been lonely and sad. 
Sometimes I feel lost and confused.
I have loved with all my heart
And I have laughed until my sides ached.
In all these very different times, my eyes have filled with tears.

I have had moments of connection to something much larger than myself and sometimes even get a glimpse of why I am meant to be here.

As we talk, I am wondering if you are a person I’ll travel with for a while.

Maybe as we learn more, we can help each other remember who we really are—the ones we knew ourselves to be before we came into our bodies.  Lets see what unfolds.”

Perhaps this is how our hearts and spirits would greet each other if we got our minds and personalities out of the way! Imagine how we might follow up with each on each of the points. We could share how and when we each have felt loved or alone. We could share all the moments we have experienced joy. We could also shrink our fears by taking turns bringing them out into the light.

What wonderful kinds of information about each other this sort of interchange could provide! Since it focuses on our mutually humanness before delineating the places and ways that we differ, we could have an opportunity to feel kinship with each other first. In sharing ourselves in this way, it feels as though we would get a deeper sense of ourselves as well as each other.

This kind of sharing feels very intimate, and yet the above “script” actually revealed very little in the way of details. I believe that it feels more intimate because this way of interacting eliminates the masks we hide ourselves behind. These disguises are the descriptions of ourselves that we put forth as a kind of “social shorthand.” They are definitions that function like categories in a library. While these library labels give us a very general idea of what is in the stacks, we can’t ever know anything about an individual volume unless we take it down off the shelf, open it up and begin to read.

When we only share our labels with each other, it is as though we are scattering a flurry of file cards in the air! It is a form of distraction that clouds genuine points of contact with another person. While it may feel safer to use these definitions we’ve become attached to, we ultimately rob ourselves of the opportunity to experience a more profound human connection. Furthermore, I believe this kind of behavior has caused us to feel more and more isolated as we move further onward into this still – fresh century.

In our health center, we are seeing an epidemic people who are experiencing loneliness and depression. People are feeling isolated even when living in a city amid thousands of people. This must be why we are collectively tweeting, blogging and posting to Facebook in ever larger numbers. Yet even while filling our time with social media, we are still left longing. While these technological innovations may help us to track down our long lost friends and spread the word about our projects, they aren’t a substitute for true, human ties.

Human beings are social animals. In our early evolution, we functioned in small groups of interconnected individuals. The same seems to hold true for us now. Even though we are part of larger communities and may know a lot of people, we usually have a smaller core of good friends or loved ones. These connections provide us with emotional nurturing and offer feelings of kinship. I would argue that it is precisely this fact that has created the phenomenon of “Tweet-ups”—those physical gatherings of people who have been following each other on Twitter!

When a human is deprived of social connections over a long period of time, they may begin experiencing feelings of depression and even spatiotemporal disorientation. It is as though our connection to other people (and the natural world) provides a context within which we can experience ourselves within time/space. While intentional solitude is an experience that many seek for a brief period to clear their minds or to seek communion with the divine, it is no accident that enforced loneliness has been used as an effective punishment method throughout history.

Recent publications have suggested links between social isolation and an increased rate of illness and early death. It seems that loneliness is profoundly disruptive to human physiology in that it impairs the thinking processes, diminishes the sense of self and will, and even alters the way the DNA functions in our immune cells.

With so many things at stake, maybe it’s time we began exploring genuine human interactions. Certainly, this new way of being would involve the risks of feeling vulnerable or “exposed.” On the other hand, this vulnerability could stimulate us to uncover and heal the misperceptions we have about ourselves and the world that produce those feelings. In feeling more whole, we would risk more connection and it could become a profound chain reaction! Each discomfort unveiling another place inside of ourselves that could eventually contribute to our inner and outer balance.

Maybe the best we can be is a suite of splendid interconnections! Certainly, if we look at our physical body or the Earth, it is the intricate interconnectivity within each that makes the organism or environment healthy. John Muir said something lovely about those connections, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

When we drop the facade that our definitions provide for us, we have the opportunity to see the connections that are already present. We discover that we weren’t really alone in this world after all. By gazing into another’s eyes, we can see reflections of our own. We can also see beyond them as if they were windows that look out on the entire universe.

So we’re back to the mutual question, “Who are you?” Let’s start avoiding the old definitions about ourselves and each other. While we don’t yet have all the details, we can be assured that we are a part of a huge, marvelous, interconnected Whole. And within that entirety, every tiny aspect is equally magnificent.

© 2010 Evelyn C. Rysdyk

Nationally recognized shaman teacher/healer, speaker, and author, Evelyn C. Rysdyk delights in supporting people to remember their sacred place in All That Is.  Whether though face-to-face contact with individual patients, groups and conference participants, or through the printed word in books, columns and articles—Evelyn uses her loving humor and passion to open people’s hearts and inspire them to live more joyful, fulfilling and purposeful lives.

She is the author of Modern Shamanic Living: New Explorations of an Ancient Path (1999), columnist and writer of numerous articles and features. Her writing and artwork have appeared in regional, national and international publications—both in print and online—and she is the executive editor of Spirit Living, an eco-spiritual e-magazine.

In joint practice with C. Allie Knowlton as Spirit Passages since 1991, she offers workshops in advanced experiential shamanism across the USA and Canada.  In addition, as founding members of True North, an integrated medical center in Falmouth, Maine, she and Allie collaborate with physicians, nurses, a psychiatrist, naturopath and other complementary health practitioners.  Evelyn may be contacted through her website: www.spiritpassages.com.