Sodium is Sodium!

Sodium is Sodium

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 2005

If the chemist is studying the element such as sodium, he does not say it is his sodium, or that somebody else studies his sodium, and of course they compare notes. Sodium is sodium universally.

David Bohm, in a conversation with J. Krishnamurti
The End of Time (1985)


The roots of psychological conflict may be as simple as the denial that “sodium is sodium.” We like to take possession of our angst as if it is ours, alone, that nobody else hurts as much as we do, is as anxious as we are, or feels as alone as we do.

Part of us sees that we are connected, but seemingly a greater part of us sees ourselves as separate. It is as if we, alone, are experiencing this ordeal called “life” in an impenetrable shell; that no one else has the faintest idea what we are experiencing, when we are all caught up in the same illusion. You cannot see nor can I see it because the illusion has been cultivated, nurtured and has become our identity. It is part of the structure that we call a life.

If you doubt the strength of this illusion that wraps us in indefinable patterns, call on someone you haven’t seen in years, remembering how miserable they were or complained to be, and chances are you will see little change and less improvement of their situation. Misery has become a secure place for them with no apparent intentions to leave it.

You visit them, cheer them up, take them someplace to get them out of themselves, and for a while, color comes into their face, a smile breaks across their lips, and a lightness of being seems to be manifested. Everything seems resolved. But when you leave, and they go back to their daily lives they are back in the game again. Should you visit them the next year, or five years hence, it would be as if they were exactly as you last saw them. Why is that?

There may be a quietness to you, a caring as well, an intelligence which is non-verbal but felt because you are paying attention to them as persons. It doesn’t last, however, because you are outside, not inside them, you are of them but not them. It is like going to church, and feeling extraordinarily good about yourself in the quiet of the place. Here the only music is the rhythm of the rafters responding to the wind. Like incense, this is superficial, comforting for a spell but then it evaporates because it doesn’t penetrate the cage.

What is there that can break through this cage, this cage that we like to think only encages us when it encages everyone? It isn’t his cage, or her cage or their cage or our cage, but a cage that human beings have built for themselves in a caged society.

What can break us out of this cage? It is an element that is lacking, an element that doesn’t belong to the scientist, the religious, the politician, the worker, the student, and on and on, or to anyone.

It is love, and love is love, and nothing else, and therefore is not personal. Love is not yours or mine, not something that belongs to anyone. Love is not that.

While we are at it, there are a great many things that we consider personal when they are not personal at all. Isolation does not belong to any one person. Therefore, it is not a personal problem. It is a human condition. Intelligence is not personal, yet we say this person is more intelligent than that person. This is just a barrier we place between and amongst us that gives substance and energy to our separation. It is why we feel divided by saying these qualities belong to us and those qualities don’t belong to us. It is our fragmentary mind that has been hard at work for many centuries to give us this divisive perspective.

So, love is our sodium. It is our element. It is not personal. Anyone can use it providing they pay attention to others, not in a superficial fashion, but in a deep, and sincere fashion; providing they are perceptive of the other person and where that person is and how that person is from that person’s point of view; providing they exercise the intelligence to see clearly how attention and perception eliminate the barriers between us, and allow love to embrace us indiscriminately.

When love connects there is no fragmentation; when love connects it captures the common bond that sees past differences, dissolves past hurts, and bridges it with compassion, so that people can get on with their lives without the bars of insecurity, fear, anxiety and pain. Does it take courage? Of course. The first step is to let go of everything and let love be love like the scientist has allowed sodium to sodium.

* * * * *

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
The Peripatetic Philosopher