“One love. One blood. One life, you got to do what you should. One life, with each other: Sisters, Brothers. One life, but we’re not the same—We get to carry each other. Carry each other.” ~U2, One
Songs lend themselves to different interpretations to different people. Many people only hear a beautiful, slightly-haunting love song. Bono himself has stated publicly that the song is about inner turmoil within the band, and how they almost split up after a concert one night. For me, this is an intensely spiritual song, a gentle reminder from the Goddess telling us what life is all about, or rather what it should be all about.
We live our lives on the surface. Office politics, PTA meetings, the endless shuffling of ourselves and our children from place to place, event to event, activity to activity. Fast food and TV dinners have taken the place of dinner at home. Rolodexes and daily planners filled to the point of bursting, we hurry up and wait through our days and collapse into silent heaps of desperation at night. Rinse and repeat, over and over again.
We give of our time, but only half-heartedly. Emails and text messages, tweets and status updates, a quick call to let someone know we’re running late, traffic is horrible. Yeah, yeah, I’ll be with you in a sec. Just let me check my email real quick. I can’t stay long, got places to go and people to see, ya know.
And the whole time, we’re starving. We’re aching for human touch, for a genuine connection. We long for someone to sit with us, to be with us, to listen to us, and to really hear what we have to say. To bond. To sympathize. To be able to look into the eyes of another human being and say: “Yes, I see you. I see the real you. I see the you who is hiding underneath everything you pretend to be, everything you have to be out there. I see your hopes, your dreams, and your fears. I see your wounds, and your scars – the battles you have fought along your path to this moment, this time. I see your pain, your shame, and your suffering. And I see your strength, your determination, and your courage that it took to move beyond the pain, and to heal yourself. I see the love that is you, reflected in the love that comes from you. In short, I see myself in you, and I want you to see yourself in me.”
That’s all anyone ever wants, really. To know that we’re not alone, and to know that we are understood, loved, and accepted just as we are. We’re starving for genuine human connections, just as we’re starving for our connection to the Divine. The good news is that it’s right there…always with us. If we can just learn to slow down and give it to each other, we can heal ourselves, and heal the world around us.
Because we’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other. Carry each other.