Why We Feel So Disconnected from Others and how to heal it

On otherness, oneness, and the grace to come home

Have you ever looked at someone and thought: you and I are two very different kinds of people, my friend. I am not even sure we come from the same planet! This usually happens just after someone does something so strange or stunning that it stops you dead in your tracks, mouth open. I am sure most of you know exactly what I am talking about.

We feel the difference between us in other, everyday ways as well. Especially when we choose to stay on the surface — scrolling through a couple of edited photos of someone's most cheerful moments, as if that would tell the real story of their lives. We stay separated in our own little virtual corner, from where we can comfortably judge or scrutinise those around us. We compare, grow bitterly resentful or envious of everyone's curated lives, and feel ourselves separating even more.

This felt sense of otherness is wedged firmly between us. It keeps us distant and perhaps even aloof to what others are truly going through. We feel lonely on our own journeys — as if we are the only ones going through our particular kind of hardship, or suffering through life while others seem to have it easy. All of this separates us not with a dramatic clash but with a quiet, persistent wall. And behind that wall, something essential is lost.

When we see ourselves as a single, separate drop of water — rather than as part of the ocean — we lose something vital. We begin to feel small. Threatened and contracted. We feel the urge to prove that we are better, force our way through, and even fight or trample, simply to get ahead. We lose ourselves in the nightmare we have created. This single, separated existence keeps us up at night and pits us against those closest to us.

When we see ourselves as the ocean — big, powerful and expansive — the way we see the world changes dramatically. The threat dissolves. The competition falls away. And in its place appears something that feels like coming home. We feel enough. We feel ourselves expand with possibilities. We are free to love others as we love ourselves and our lives. We feel open, available and at peace.

Let's return to the otherness we experience when someone is doing harm.

We are One. And therefore we can never hurt someone or something else without hurting ourselves just as much in return.

We may not feel it in the moment. But life has a way of serving back, in time, what we have planted and tended and harvested from our own patch of ground. We choose how we want it cooked — but we eat what we grow. This is not judgment, simply the way things are. And once that truth has truly landed, once we stop blaming everyone else for what life is dishing up, we discover something remarkable: the power to choose is one of the greatest gifts we have been given. We simply need to stand still long enough to use it wisely.

So breathe. Take a walk outside before you move from fear and make a rash decision you might regret. Especially when you feel rushed to do something immediately — that urgency is a signal, not an instruction. Wait. Breathe. Calm your nervous system by simply noticing where you are contracted, what emotions are surging, what thoughts are demanding your attention. Become the compassionate observer — watch, breathe, and let it pass until you feel grounded and centred again.

A sleeping baby resting on its mother's chest looks the same in every country, every culture, every century. The same softness. The same vulnerability. The same quiet, unguarded innocence — completely untouched by the world that is waiting for it. Perhaps something of that is still true in all of us. Beneath the conditioning, the stories, the defences, the choices and the consequences — there is a shared Oneness. An Essence. A beating heart that has never gone anywhere. It is still there, in every person we encounter, waiting to be recognised, seen and cherished.

This does not mean we simply excuse harmful behaviour or sweep it under the rug by choosing to be kind instead. We must take responsibility for our choices. Accountability and compassion are not opposites. They are partners. I am simply asking one question: can we treat a person as a precious, equal soul — while holding what they do as something entirely separate from who they are?

In my forthcoming book, I explore the illusion of separateness — the drop and the ocean, the sleeping child, and the grace we so often mistake for our own cleverness — along with simple practices for softening back into oneness with everyone and everything around us.