Me And The Snail
Where Cultivating Sensitive Interconnectedness Leads
I stepped outside my door last night, and stepped on a snail. I heard the sound of his shell crushing. Oh how I long to slow down even more, the hunger to move at a pace where all lives matter. I felt the force of my actions deeply. The pain of my unconscious intervention in someone else’s life. I lifted up the broken body and placed it on the soil in one of my planters, maybe there was still life there that could go on. (He was gone this morning). I had just been celebrating the presence of a little snail the other day whose feelers were so lively as I shone my torch on it, so full of life.
This interconnectedness is as a result of my own softening of the trauma in my nervous system. I did not know that this path of arrival would bring me so close to all life forms, but it has. And this arrival has re-membered me and my body into a kind of belonging that I believe is our natural heritage and that brings me such wellbeing. It’s a place in me that I tend to every day through moments of grief and gratitude, and a place where my body finds a home, finally, with me in it wholeheartedly.
My hope is that all humans might live in this sense of interconnectedness because this is where an understanding that we all have needs arises, you, me and the wild things, and that the wild things are the reason we still exist as a species. This is where peace lies. We cannot live on sunshine alone (especially if you live in Ireland!) we are dependent on all living things to absorb the light for us so that we can absorb that energy through the gift of their presence through us. I would like to return that gift by moving at a pace where I hold the consciousness that my physical body shares space with all life.
Clare O’Sullivan
Resensitisation Through Compassion Teacher And Coach
Photos by cocoparisienne and oldiefan
