"Manakamana": On Being With People

Hi everyone,

This last month has been a lot.  I am at a point where my brain is feeling overloaded to a point I do not like, and that's of course hard to sit with.  I notice in myself the urge to rush to explain how things will be okay or how this feeling won't last forever, but instead I'm just going to let that reality sit.

The outer world is overwhelming, of course, in many painful and anxiety-inducing ways.  One of the things I've been feeling acutely in recent weeks is the physical absence of people.  The physical isolation of the pandemic is of course difficult for everyone in some fashion and has been for some time, but I somehow reached a critical mass of missing being with people just now.  

So much of what I like about being a psychologist is being with people.  Although I've known that for a long time, it's only relatively recently--since the world turned indefinitely upside-down due to the pandemic--that I've realized how much I specifically like sharing space with people.  I like sitting in a room across from someone, being able to see their face and all of their body language, being able to hear their voice in same room as me instead of through tinny headphones, sharing the same light and the same view out my office window.  I like watching people get comfortable in a space with me.  I like opening my office door and inviting people inside, closing the door behind them to create a safe, cozy, holding space, a small temporary refuge, for them.

(I also miss my office.  SO MUCH.  My office is so cute!  I miss my beautiful deep blue couch, my midcentury modern desk, my admittedly generic therapy art, my surprisingly comfortable Ikea desk chair, my perfect little table for my notepad, my bin of fidgets, my whiteboard and being able to draw on it at people, my thousand lamps because fluorescent light is the devil, and my gauzy Target drapes.  For the first time in my professional life, everything in my office was chosen, not imposed.  I miss my personal, professional space--an extension of me that I feel proud of.)

So it's probably not surprising that I'd like to share the movie "Manakamana" (2014) with you.  It is wonderful.  Instead of holding out on you, I'll just tell you now: I gave this movie a 5.

Paradoxically, there isn't much to this remarkable film.  It is an experimental documentary comprised solely of 11 cable car trips to and from the titular Nepalese Manakamana Temple.  There is no narrative structure other than the gentle cadence of those 11 trips, each punctuated by a brief plunge into darkness, the clank of metal, and the grinding of gears as the car reaches one of its hubs.

"Manakamana" is a deeply meditative film.  You simply watch each cable car-load of living things--mostly people, but sometimes a cat, some goats, or a chicken--sail through the Nepalese countryside.  You watch people have the sorts of idle, drifting conversations that are uniquely possible in transit, interspersed with unexpected music or taking selfies.  

As the movie progresses, you begin to develop an inner sense of when each passage is about to come to a close.  With each plunge into the blackness, a remarkable sense of reincarnation occurs as the cable car emerges with a different set of passengers than those it contained just a moment ago.  This reminded me of a passage from a book about Zen that described all living things as drops of water in a giant river, taking shape as individual droplets as they briefly fall through the waterfall of life, only to become one again with the river at the bottom of the waterfall.  Even as we're all traveling through life, thinking of ourselves as individual little droplets, the river's current draws us along and links us to all other living things.

How lovely to sit peacefully in that cable car, traveling from one place surrounded by people to another place surrounded by people, enjoying a brief respite to look around you at the beautiful mountains, trees, homes, and fields.

How lovely to sit in a room with someone, just for a short time, knowing that the respite of that space is guaranteed and that you will easily return to it again and again because it welcomes you.

I miss the world so much.  I will be so glad to have it back.

{Heart}