The City of Multiplicity.

Here we reflect upon on the importance of human connection in understanding ourselves and the world around us.

When you look in a mirror you see yourself.

I have slowly developed the belief that our understanding of reality works much like a mirror, where the details of the reflection are dependent on your ability to recognise similar details in your own being.

We will define an “understanding of reality” here as the extent or resolution at which you are able to perceive and understand the world around you, including other humans.

Imagine this: your whole life you have walked around thinking that a human face has only a nose.

Why?

Because you have only ever been aware of your own nose and therefore the only thing you are able to perceive are the other little noses reflecting back at you.

Fundamentally, you can only realise in the world what you are able to realise in yourself.

Then one day, through embracing your inbuilt curiosity to uncover “more” of yourself, you gain the awareness that you have a mouth.

Suddenly the world around you can be understood through a nose, a mouth and also the instinctual relationship that exists between them.

“Oh wow, can you smell the lavenders? They’re beautiful.”

There you go, suddenly you have a new way to express your experience of reality. You are more integrated because you have the ability to capture more of life (through smelling and speaking) and also have an experiential understanding that the world is shaped by both of these senses.

The nose-mouth humans understand their realty through their experiences with life.

The clearer the reflection, the deeper the connection. And vice versa.

My wife Natalia and I believe in the dedicated pursuit of self-awareness.

This is a journey that every person in the world can interact with, it’s not a path of exclusivity, it’s a birth right and an ongoing journey to embrace what it means to truly love your uniquely shaped self and the world around you.

I believe that through fostering a deep relationship with yourself, you polish the mirror that reflects and determines your understanding of reality. It becomes clearer, crisper and less distorted.

This allows you to access a reflection that gleams with the power to show you that your understanding of reality grows in the same way you do. You literally mirror one another in a beautiful cycle that enforces the notion that you are as natural and interconnected as everything in world around you.

Experiences are needed to keep your mirror shining.

An experience is state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation.

The relationship between self awareness and an understanding of reality are intimately connected by one’s lived experiences.

Experiences are the portal to unlock a clearer reflection of reality. They allow you to interact with life and realise the details that are integral to and omnipresent in all that is living. Simply, experiences translate what you know and understand about yourself onto reality.

There are an abundance of experiences that are presented to every individual throughout life, each of which has a unique flavour which is alive with the opportunity to see a detail in yourself that would otherwise be locked away. The problem with us humans is that we have developed a resistance to cease many of these experiences due to our social conditioning and subsequent fears.

How many times have you not been able to follow your heart, gut or head because of a prejudice that you feared from the outside world? It’s highly likely that this is also a prejudice that you simultaneously hold within yourself.

Taking a broad brush, there are 4 possible categories of experiences that one can have in the outside world. These are:

• With other humans.

• With animals.

• With other forms of natural life such as plants, fungi, natural landscapes (including the sea and the sky), natural soundscapes and the elements.

• With human developed recreations, art forms, technologies and artefacts (this includes all forms of art, sports and technologies etc.)

Here I want the focus solely on experiences with other humans.

And for that I’d like to reflect on one of my most recent experiences in the most popular habitat of the modern human being.

A city.

The human bubble.

I believe that experiences with other humans are becoming less prominent in the world.

Humans have evolved to become increasingly insular, and self-contained, often walking around plugged into a device or lost in a trapping narrative about themselves and the world around them.

Human connection of course differs across cultures, but at least in the western world I believe that the majority of people living in cities largely keep themselves contained in their own bubble. This way of being has meant that to access and understand the culture of a new place through travel, one must seek experiences with literature, architecture, museums, guided tours and the gastronomy scene.

I was someone who felt safe and fulfilled travelling in this way, but as my self-awareness grows, I find that my deep desire to understand the raw expression of human nature in a place grows too. This is something that can’t be showcased as a package or artificially displayed, it must be engaged with through the willingness of the people around you.

An experience with another human being is dependent on their desire to show you who they are and what they stand for.

Sure, for those who travel and stay in one place for months at a time, it is far more likely that they will experience the natural ways of locals around them.

But I wasn’t expecting to experience what we did in just 3 days in Vancouver, Canada.

Vancouver: the city of human connection.

Vancouver is a city rich with natural beauty, it has golden sand coastlines, rugged pebbled beaches laid with silver worn tree trunks and laden with vegetation and forests.

For me personally, connecting with nature is effortless. Everyone who is willing to get lost in the beauty of the natural world can do so and become enchanted by its power and grace. It offers no resistance, no fear and no ulterior motive. It allows you to sense exactly what it is as long as you are willing to experience it.

The same can’t be said for humans however, where resistance and fear often provide a buffer when faced with an opportunity to connect with a “stranger”. However, during our 3 days stay in Vancouver, the willingness and openness of the people around us to connect was extraordinary.

The city of Vancouver represents a patch work quilt of nationalities and cultures, where nothing seems “typically Canadian” and you have to search hard to find an area which is overly gentrified and that lacks the authentic roots of the service or retail goods offered. The presence and passion of the indigenous people was particularly moving, and we were lucky enough to witness the second annual “Indigenous People’s Day” on June 21st, where locals gathered in a small, modest neighbourhood to celebrate the traditions of the people. This day fittingly falls on the longest day of the year, a symbol of the continued rise and celebration of this historically oppressed community which continues to shine.

From our 3 days in the city, there are several experiences with others that I could dissect. The encounter I have chosen to focus on is one which above all has allowed me to understand and appreciate another human being in a way I was incapable of doing so before.

The wet white dress and the blind dog.

Sitting on the sandy beach at The English Bay, Natalia and I laid out our food and drink in front of us, ready to soak up the sun and unwind.

As we begun to set out our nest I couldn’t help but wonder about the spot we had chosen. It was rather strange, the beach was completely packed with people, yet this one section where we lay was practically deserted, almost as if a crime scene had been cornered off with an invisible police tape.

I looked up and, in the water, directly in front of us was a woman, probably in her 30s, dressed in what I can only describe as a wedding dress, repeatedly submerging herself in the water with her Saint Bernard paddling alongside her. At the shore she had a large trolley filled with her belongings, which made me believe she was likely homeless.

Immediately I thought to myself “Is she the reason no one is here?”

I didn’t feel uncomfortable by her presence, in fact I was intrigued by her energy and excitement. However, I immediately knew a previous version of myself would have been deterred by her eccentric behaviour and this was why I was entertaining the idea that she was putting others off.

Soon after we settled, the big friendly hound started to waddle back to shore at a snail’s pace. Immediately the woman panicked and started profusely apologising to us from the water, stating he was blind. She repeated this several times, even though there was no threat whatsoever from the pup and his distance from us remained substantial.

This was the first time we had a glimpse of the desire in this woman for human connection.

Prejudice is a great time saver; you can form opinions without getting facts.

As I lay back on the sand to rest, I started to notice that my back felt tight and stiff. I began to do some simple stretches in an attempt to straighten myself out.

That’s when I heard her call out to me.

She pointed out that I was doing the stretches wrong and asked if she could show me how to do them more effectively.

I looked over and agreed.

Her name was Samantha, she had a childlike energy in her eyes and body which had clearly been exposed to life. Her hands were rough with broken skin which looked weathered by the elements. She asked if she could touch me and I said yes, knowing full well that this situation would be met with some anxiety on my part. But I wanted to experience this human being, I didn’t want to assume I knew who she was and deny myself the opportunity to understand her.

She revealed she was a professional fighter and explained to me that I needed force to help with my muscular issue. She pushed my arm back, twisting it in a way that felt painful but relieving for the discomfort in my back.

From that point on you could see the burning desire in her to connect, she begun to tell us her story, explaining that her dog Oscar was sadly blinded by bear spray during a robbery. So eager was she to prove to us that he was harmless, that she ended up throwing Oscar across us in a frantic demonstration of his gentle nature. Their gentle nature.

Before we departed, Samantha, chucked us over a can of Southern Iced Tea to enjoy in the sun which accidentally struck me hard on the leg.

The bruise it left has been a constant reminder that without an understanding of context, kindness can easily be mistaken for bad intention.

We as humans need to experience each other in order to understand ourselves and the world around us, without that we will keep living in fear.

Like bees and honey.

During our time in Vancouver, Natalia and I felt particularly open to the world. The city provided the perfect playground to allow us to be drawn in by all those seeking meaningful connection.

The experience with Samantha allowed me to reflect upon my anxiety concerning our safety when we are travelling. It helped me to understand that I was losing part of myself and the beauty of those around me if I continued to succumb to my fears.

Vancouver is sadly a place of many homeless people, many of whom occupy crowded streets in Downtown. Throughout the trip, we made sure we didn’t go out of our way to avoid these areas. As dauting as they seemed at first, to share the streets with these people, even for a brief moment, helped us feel closer to them. Reminding us that we humans were born to be connected.

Bees create honey which makes nature sweeter. A sting is a small price to pay for a sweeter nature.

To end, here’s a photo of me, taken by Natalia, near one of the beautiful beaches in Vancouver.

Usually these moments would be the most memorable parts of our trips, but I’m very happy that this time, the most significant moments couldn’t be captured on a camera.