I rarely go to festivals.
The sheer amount of stimulation, sounds, colours, conversations, performances, invitations, feels like too much for the rhythm my body naturally moves with. There’s rarely enough space to pause, to sense, to truly taste life as it comes. This past weekend, I found myself at a family festival. It wasn’t a usual place for me to be, but I went, and I stayed, as best I could, in company with myself.
I accompanied my body like one would accompany a child in a busy marketplace, present, steady, attentive. I needed that kind of presence to remain in contact with the intensity of external outputs, and also with the echoes inside me that kept surfacing: grief, longing, beauty, tenderness, overwhelm.
What struck me most was not the chaos or noise, but the absence.
The absence of depth. The absence of contact.
In spaces that could become laboratories for new ways of being for returning to nature, for gathering in more life-giving ways, I felt the pull of something else: the fast-tracked, performative, dopamine-fuelled version of togetherness. A motorway of stimulation. An acceleration that drowns the quieter voices inside us and between us.
People danced. People drank. People escaped. I could see the innocence beneath it, the yearning to belong, to connect, to feel. And I grieved.
I grieved all the love that was never given.
I grieved the deep care that was not shared.
I grieved how easily we disconnect from ourselves and one another when we gather, even with the best intentions.
And yet, I also learned.
I learned again the delicate art of staying close to the body, to its limits and wisdom.
I noticed the feedback loops that come alive when we’re in contact with others, how one nervous system meets another, how gestures ripple, how subtle or abrupt our boundaries can be.
I was reminded of the fragile edge of real contact, that shimmering space where we might dare to be authentic, to feel deeply, and stay there, even briefly, with one another.
So when we call out to the outer environment, to gather, to celebrate, to create, I believe it matters deeply to pause and ask:
What is my true intention here? What am I really longing for?
If we don’t ask, the event may go on, the music, the lights, the shared meals, but something essential will be missing.
We will have gathered without truly coming together.
We will have missed the moment to listen for life, to offer real presence, to weave something deeper.
And in the midst of all this, there was friendship, the kind that quietly witnesses your grief without needing to fix it.
The meaning of contact in friendship became clear to me there: that noticing the grief together was, in itself, a great teaching.
That shared presence, even in disconnection, can be profoundly connective.
And yes, I had a great time, altogether.
Not because it was easy or ideal, but because I stayed close to what was true.
Because I could feel. Because I could learn.
But perhaps even then, something in us still knows.
And perhaps that knowing is a beginning.
To:
Maureen, Gabi, Olga and Clare my dear Grieving and loving companions.
The Soundtrack of the weekend: The deepest Breath from Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin