Locked In

Photo Credit: Ryan Roth-Klinck

By Andrea Lingle

A solipsist is one who believes that theirs is the only real experience. All the other kids on the playground are fabricated by the solipsist’s mind to fill out the landscape. The girl in the green polka-dotted sundress with long brunette curls is the solipsistic way of avoiding the despair of being alone. She is a projection of the mind.

We are all a little solipsistic.

Guillain-Barre is a syndrome wherein the nervous system shuts down temporarily. It ascends through the body shutting down the informatics of the body. It creeps up with a trip here and there and advances to the inability of the person to breathe independently. In nursing school Guillain-Barre was referred to as “locked-in” syndrome because the patient was fully aware and unable to communicate.

We are all a little locked in.

As much as we know that we are called to be in community, we are only able to experience the world from our own point of view. The girl in the green polka-dot dress’s skinned knee can only be empathized with—never truly experienced. The boy in the buffalo plaid shirt, running so effortlessly through the wind and sunshine, will never know what the sun looks like glinting off his mop of hair. Because he can’t see himself from my point of view.

In Western North Carolina, where I live, the leaves have begun to whisper of fall. From the summer haze of green coating the mountains, something has changed. There are a few individual trees that have begun to burn with their prophetic message: colder weather is coming. We will soon be caught up in the great tumble to winter. Prepare. I am sitting in the fall wind as I write this. You won’t be when you read this—at least not in the same wind. We do not have the same experience. Perhaps, like me, you can glimpse the hint of fall, or, perhaps, you live in the southern hemisphere where it’s all daffodils and crocuses. Or maybe, you sit in a place of perpetual warmth where seasons are more about holidays than weather. Because the world is so wide, about 25,000 miles at the equator, any one position seems complete. From horizon to horizon, the world is consistent, more or less, with my experience, but walk a thousand miles north or south and I will have to admit that, one, I am tired, and, two, things look different.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do in community is realize that you are just a little bit of a solipsist. You think you are the measure of experience. You are just a little bit locked in. You are you, and you experience from your point of view.

Imagine the power of trusting the other enough to allow them to reveal the multifaceted beauty of the world from another point of view. That is the power of community.