(3): One-another-ness

One-another-ness is the way our us-ness combines with otherness. It’s the way we live together: in defined and chosen communities (in part), but also, and more importantly, in how we exist or fill in the boundaries between our bodies. One-another-ness is how we share with each other, how we treat each other’s bodies, and how we imagine what’s in between those bodies.

I love the way Rainer Maria Rilke captures life through the poetic word. He writes, “Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.” Translating his words using -ness language, I think you could say:

One-another-ness consists in this, that my us-ness protects and borders and salutes your otherness.

This is the story we can choose to be a part of. This is the narrative arc our lives are meant to travel – an arc bent towards the protecting, bordering, and saluting of each other as the way of living this radical, new life of one-another-ness.