Apparently, Humans Need Each Other?
by Chris Kamalski
Occasionally in a Facebook comment, I stumble across the fact that I am saying something, well, worth saying. Here’s a clip in reply to a friend that asked how a 48-hour silent retreat was this past weekend:
Parts great, parts really sucky. I’m realizing that I need people around me more now, than I need solitude (which is amazing considering how much I love silence and retreat and am wired that way).
I have grown to expect isolation and aloneness is the norm, and clearly it’s not.
Apparently, human health is being relationally connected, is it not?
Somewhere in my DNA these past few years I have deeply internalized the reality that I am alone (and even worse, that I ‘deserve’ this somehow for relational failure in my past), and have grown to prefer being unhealthy as opposed to healthy.Healthy is being connected to people: Maxie, my team here, new friends in south africa, all you amazing people back home.
Who’da thunk it? Maybe God is up to something deep…
Becoming Chris Kamalski 
Well, you do just happen to be made in the image of a relational being…
I think we all tend to overemphasize or drift toward the thing that’s most natural for us. For me right now, I need more solitude, but that’s because I am so well connected to people and spend “too much” (whatever that means) time connecting with people and not enough time in solitude. But for you it’s opposite and I would agree with you bro, sit, play, and eat with people, that’s what your soul needs more than anything in this season!
Thanks boys. Agreed! Off to jazz tonight to celebrate our director’s birthday..
Thrash: Remember how Andrew Hartman and I praticed solitude together as a shared discipline during college? Maybe one of your SC boys with kiddos (or Goodfellow) would be up for a short weekly practice of that each week.