Where there is isolation, connection occurs.

This was a recent discovery I made when I was going through my photo album. Although we consider isolation and connection to be two different words, in reality, these words aren’t only words! They are a pair. They have some sort of relation to each other, not only in a particular case but whenever these terms occur.

I uncovered old memories, and, after staring at a photo of myself and my younger sister, I thought of the strange but helpful combination of connection and isolation.

They cause a lot of trouble, with their chameleon-like behavior and those big starry eyes that always convince the intermediary to favor them. Can you guess who they are? SISTERS.

My younger sister has always fought with me, always teased me but has never gotten caught; she used to slap me and kick me, but Mom’s verdict was always on her side while I was punished! At one point, I became fed up with this and started to think that sisters were evil. I began to feel that they don’t care for brothers and are always trying to get praise from their moms. After that, I was a bit angry with my sister and just stopped talking to her. This went on for a couple of days.

One day, she sneaked into the kitchen, ate a whole ice cream carton, and fell ill with fever and cough. I was in my room trying to read a comic but, for some reason, was unable to concentrate. Suddenly, I instinctively felt that my sister was in trouble.

I don’t know why, but my anger vanished and some sort of “bond” dragged me down to her room. Sibling rivalry turned into sibling love and care. That day I helped her with all her work and even rushed to the store to pick up medicine for her. I wasn’t that concerned for her earlier, but my previous “isolation” helped “connect” me with my sister, and I felt a bit weird about this magic! Helping her gave me great satisfaction. Soon, she began to recover and finally became fit as a fiddle. She was now fully charged to trouble me again! However, to my utmost surprise, days went by and there were no tiffs with my sister. This experience seemed to have transformed the relationship between us. Or was it a silence before the storm?

After some months, I was unexpectedly down with dengue fever. I experienced how being sick was such a terrible thing, and my sister must have felt the same. I felt weak and dizzy with the high temperature. I could not even get up from my place; I could see it was going to be a tough recovery. I worried, who will help me? Who will play with me? I realized that all my worries were unfounded when, like an angel, my sister came into my room and calmed me down. She sat there, trying to entertain me and make me feel happy. Unbelievably, she even started to clean up the mess I had created in my room! This was kind of a miracle because she never cleaned her own messy room, but today she helped to clean mine!

That day I finally understood the mathematics behind all this. That is, if we do have a bond, a deep bond, it always creates an adhesive of connection! It could be an emotional connection in the form of thoughts tickling our minds or a physical one that does not allow us to go away until the person we are with is happy and fulfilled. I learned that when we start trusting someone or something, we start to rely on that particular person or thing. In fact, when we set aside time to reflect in isolation, often the insights that emerge help us to interact, trust, or understand someone or something and strengthen the “connection” between us.

We often ignore someone when he or she tries to oppose our opinions, but we rarely try to isolate our thoughts, that is to stop thinking about our perspectives and try to explore an issue from another person’s point of view. Conflict arises when we don’t try to understand someone’s opinion when there is a clash of perspectives. Even if we know all about rights and wrongs, we usually try to dominate the person in front when we are in such situations. I feel like in most situations, we should try to “isolate” ourselves from our own emotions. That is, understand the case from both sides so confusion will be cleared and so too will our disputes! That's what happened with me and my sister. The day I fell sick, we both isolated our emotions, and thought about each other, we both realized the love and care we had for each other! This kind of repaired our perspectives towards each other and created love and respect for each other.

We also rarely try to invest in ourselves. I feel like when we isolate ourselves, we might be able to solve our problems. By “self-isolating” — that is, performing self-reflection — we will be able to identify ourselves, our true selves! My sister and I were bothered by the anger and the hate we had for each other, and this obscured the love we had for each other. But the day we started to seriously think about ourselves, everything was discovered! From that day, we had no tiffs with each other. I feel like “self-isolation” improved the way we thought about each other and indirectly brought us closer by giving time for our attitudes toward each other to mature. This allowed us to discover we had compassion for each other.

Every question in a textbook has its answer on one of the pages in the book itself. Similarly, every human has a solution for his or her problem in himself or herself — the only thing needed to get the solution is to explore ourselves! I never knew my sister’s love for me until I reflected on this incident. Certain misunderstandings in my mind made me think just one negative way about my sister and never allowed me to see the love and care she had for me. The conclusion is, different perspectives can arise by using this magical combo of connection and isolation! If we use this combination properly, it will result in a positive world, mind, and mindset!

Where there is isolation,
Connection occurs.
And where there is the use of this combination,
Peace occurs absolutely!