The moment I use the word distance, I get expressions of dislike, judgement, unacceptance. Maybe that’s the relationship we have formed with this word. For us we distant someone we do not want to interact or engage with. Distance provokes the perception of “faraway” and somewhere subconsciously guides us to “stay away”.

So, let’s see things in a different perspective.

In lockdown you distanced from several places and people and reduced the distance between you and your home. What all insights you gained due to this distance?

A metaphorical way to look at it is, bring your palm close to your eyes so much so that it sticks to your forehead- can you see the lines in your palm?

Now create a foot of a distance between your eyes and your palm and try seeing, then imagine your palm is half a km away.

In all the three cases the view, clarity and understanding of palm was different.

Today morning while talking to a friend this conversation of distance came up. She mentioned that she has reached out to a childhood friend to do a perception check about her so that she understands how people see her. My friend was a bit surprised to receive adjectives that she no more relates to/or less relates to.The perception exercise clearly told her that the childhood friend is stuck in past and not been able to see the newness of her growth. Is this familiar to you?

Perceptions are hard to change and probably that’s the route of conflicts and inability for people to move on. Clarity meets us when we see things from Distance as they are without any strings attached. So far for my friend, perception of a childhood friend is unshakable truth of life.

A lot of times we think that people who know us through our struggles of our lives are the people who understand us in-and-out, but we forget that these people are humans who have started defining us by our pasts (with lot of love). For them we are what we were in our strongest and weakest moments. For them we are what we hide and for them we are how they love us, how they forgive us and how we are together.

Isn’t it strange and tangled?

While the love binds us, we are still defined by our past. Which is not very different from how anyone else see us. Irrespective of the softness of judgement, the fact is “there is judgement” and tags given to everyone because mind needs to store information in different files. Our brains are conditioned to create good files and bad files and our experiences automatically save impressions of people, incidences and relationships there without checking with us whether we need a folder of “Non-judgement”.

Only when we observe and see things from distance, we realize it doesn’t need to go in either good or bad file. Also, that the information is obsolete, and that people might have changed and grown.

Distance just means detached not disconnected! Distance gives us the power to see things clearly, objectively, completely to help us decide the location of the folder.

Distance is the power to consciously decide and safe files in the folder or “Non-Judgement”.

Now if your relationship with the word “Distance” shifted a bit, would you like to reflect on the first questions I asked in the beginning?

In lockdown you distanced from several places and people and reduced the distance between you and your home. What all insights you gained due to this distance?

Along with that some more questions,

How is distance serving you?
How can distance help you move forward in your important relationships?
How can distance become a reason for a new chapter in your career?
What would you like to communicate to people through distance?