by Lisa Koshkarian, Ph.D.

HOME 

A client and I laugh together; my writing group members help one another; I feel dehumanization when I read The Vegetarian by Han Kang; I listen to a podcast, learn, and grieve. These are instances of accompaniment, reminiscent of a favorite phrase of spiritual leader Ram Dass (2018): “We’re all just walking each other home.” Ram Dass is among the voices that touches me and brings clarity about the meaning of humanity. Precisely examining his words and sentences proliferates connections in my work and in my life. It allows me to make contact with him and his ideas, and in turn, with myself. 

“We’re all…” seems to embody an expansive inclusiveness. In fact, it implies limitlessness: the birds, the bees, the trees, the cats and dogs, me, you, our patients, our partners, our chosen and non-chosen family members, the Mumbai hotel chef, the flower shop clerk in Santiago, the Zambian school child, the Sister of Mercy in Ireland, the man living on the street and the one living in a mansion. “…Just” is the essence of everything, the crux of life. It’s all we are doing, and it’s all that matters. It conjures starkness, like a red balloon against a blue sky, a singular teardrop at a memorial, a wild lily standing alone in a field, revivalist sex, breathing (and noticing it). I can crawl into it, curl up, and make it my own. “…Walking each other” feels like the most dynamic phrase. We aren’t only walking, we are walking ‘each other’. We are in a mutual, interdependent, inseparable relationship with one another. I can’t walk without you, and you can’t walk without me. ‘Walking’ encompasses all possible actions and inactions for living beings.

In treatment, it is witnessing, co-creating bridges with words, it is symmetrical or asymmetrical facial expressions, it is feeling together, and thinking together, it’s unilateral anger, or sorrow, registered, or not, by the other. It is silence, and it’s a shared gaze. Exhibits of rawness and acts of mercy. Walking is living in every possible iteration, and for me, contextualizes the more painful moments, especially the ones that can register as hardly bearable. I can more fluidly swim around in rage, despair, fear, and shattering disappointment attendant with joy, humor, excitement, and curiosity with all of my co-accompanying wayfarers.

“Home” exists in the body and between bodies. It’s an ever-unfolding experience. A starting point, and a final destination. Life and death. These are the universals. Then there’s our idiosyncratic homes. My home is being collectively engendered with the requisite help of fellow walkers. Strangers and intimate companions alike have made way for me to locate love inside and outside of my home. They have allowed me to recognize my body in all of its powers and its vulnerabilities. They have guided me, often unbeknownst to them, toward the capacity to mourn, conjoined with appreciation of what is, and acceptance of what isn’t. “We’re all just walking each other home” means I am always alone and not alone at once.