THE FIRST STEP toward your Other will not be out into the thin air before you. Instead, you must first take a step inward.
For the material from which two people may construct a bridge of connection is found not in the world around us,
but rather deep in the mysterious expanses
of our own minds and bodies:
in our Self.
The stone and steel that support us over our chasms are mined within the Self: our life story, our emotions, and our patient and determined attention toward our Other’s story and feelings.
So to begin,
we must turn
away from our ledges
and descend a winding
staircase into the dark
unknown of mind and body.
We must get acquainted with the twisting hallways of emotion, with the epic tales we have spun about the life we have lived, are living, and hope or fear that we may live.
For in order to share something
of ourselves we must first
discover
who
we
are.