Encountering Each Other
A timeless meeting of others.
Often I am asked “How are you Millicent?” Or some shade of that question, perhaps dressed up in fancy shoes, such as it comes out as “how is your journey?” or “how is the universe in you?”
Recently, I asked a woman “how are you?” as I sunk into a chair next to her, after many months apart.
She shook her head full of hair, in despair, and breathed in “Millicent, ask me a different question.”
A smile wormed across my face, I went squishy inside.
Of course, that is not what I really wanted to say. I waited, lengthening my body in the deck chair and looked into the distance. I wanted to walk closer to her, and to myself. And encounter her, right now, in exactly the way she is and to encounter myself also. In that place of where her and I meet now, not who we are in my memories.
I started walking. I told her a delightful story of what had happened to me today. Impressions upon my heart, allowing my mouth to shape experiences that had moved me. Softly the dance began of getting to know one another. Slowly she met me and revealed herself, settling deeper into now, the way two mountains will meet at the bottom, their individual views from each top remaining quite distinct.
This meeting of souls thrills me. Offering unimagined delights. I have had plenty of opportunities to meet new and old friends in this way the last months. I started to walk Te Araroa which meant I had plenty of stretchy alone hours, to wrap myself in. Content in my own rhythm, company, and walking boots. It also meant I got to savour the drawn out moment of another human soul encountering me, as they approached from far off, or I slowly traced my way towards them.
Once I sat munching my avocado crackers, blissfully chewing on my own dreams. Wafting my gaze out over the piny wasteland, and enjoying the cool touch of my sweaty t-shirt cheeking my back. When I heard the rhythmic crunch of shoe on gravel approaching me. I watched as a long legged gentleman, slightly bent over made his measured way towards me. My first impulse was that of a caught rabbit. I paused chewing, sunk a little deeper into the grass, my breathing shallowed. My fear scanned the situation quickly and revealed no immediate threat to my life … only the danger of a conversation with someone I had never met before. Something I spend a lot of time avoiding, as I move through crowds of unknown people in towns and on public transport. Here we were comrades. Automatically the circumstance made us fellow adventures of the wide, barren lands and endless paths. Here we were a sanctuary for one another, a human oasis in this wild timeless land. The kilometers working their magic of eroding a woman or man from their identities, leaving only a residue of memory, a film of sweat and light coating of road dust. The effort required to keep the familiar stories of who one is in the universe, no longer necessary. Instead, that tap is turned off to funnel the precious energy into getting from one end of the day to the other.
In these circumstances another human consciousness is like a gift from the unseen realms. As water is to the parched tounge. A refreshing pool to lift ones soul from the dirt and high skies, to sing a sweet song of humanness, of story, ideas, purpose and identity… a power that we humans have, within us. A power often welded to mask the intensity of simply being.
He arrived beside me, paused in his travel and leant to an upright stand. I looked up into his face and grinned, “Hello!”, he returned my greeting. We both waited. There was no time, no pressure, no hurry. Then a we exchanged a few details of our immediate travels, then wider travels, quickly finding common ground amongst our other narratives. The cicadas sang, the sun spoke loud and hot upon us. We wasted little energy on pretence or composure. Then it was over, he turned towards the trail, bent forward and crunched away into the blue.
Many times something of the sort happened. Such as the wise woman who sat beside me on a 3 hour bus journey. The first hour we did not speak, her hands busy embroidering. Then she started talking, I was glad to let her soft voice wash over me and discover her world. It was honoured that she would reveal so much to me. Soon she was pouring out such precious wisdom that I was scrambling for my notebook to take notes as she spoke. Some of what she passed on:
Follow your gut instinct, more than a logical argument
Go against what others say
Hold the bigger plan in your awareness and don’t be afraid to work hard on a project you love.
When building your home, start on the inside… your inside “what do you smell, feel, look at, how are things arranged so it pleases a deep inner rightness?”
You can never tell how things will unfold, “You are damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but what if you could have and you did not?”
Then she turned to me near the end of our time together and looked deep into my eyes, she said “Your path will lead you to many forks in the road where you will have to choose, follow your inner sense always… your wonder”.
I have come to discover that, as humans, we are made to meet each other. A long lost friend, a stranger, a family member or simply someone walking down the same road at the same time.
We are made to find each other, exactly as we are and sing together. A tune found only now, and only between us. These precious encounters fold themselves into my heart, they are the weave that makes my tapestry. The water between my stepping stones. The capillary that pulls blood through my veins.
May 2026 be a year in which you discover another, again and again and allow your wonder to lead the way.
Love,
Millicent
I loved every second of this read Millicent 🧡
It felt like a delicious elixir to calm my soul.