Silken skeins – webbed or stray?

My daughter’s last annual medical check-up involves a blood draw. Eyes widen as she methodically evaluates each item on the tray – tourniquet, syringe, needle… The room steadily fills with tension emanating from her little being. As I watch her squirm at the thought of her looming fate, I wish for a giant syringe to draw out the tension from the room.

When the nurse momentarily leaves the room, two sets of eyes (hers and mine) stare at the tray on the table. Hers - with a sense of impending doom; mine – with apprehension about her reaction.

That feeling is familiar - that prickly hedgehog-like stiffness she exhibits. I have done the same on several occasions during my hospital stay. Rats… another wrong gene? 

“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask.

“Sure,” eyes still on the tray, tone suggesting a questionable level of interest.

“Sometimes,” I continue, refusing to let the tone discourage me, “I simply imagine that the person holding the syringe, is my friend. I even say a mental ‘thank-you for helping me feel better’.”

She lets out a sigh and an all too familiar shake of the head.

“That helps me relax and makes it all just a little bit better. Would you like to try?”

Her vague shrug serves as answer, but she seems to reflect (or continues to stare at the menacing tray).
…

“Did it help?” I am curious.

“Can we get ice-cream since I was so brave?” I laugh and give in.

As we lick our ice-creams, I wonder if she used my little trick. I wonder if she will remember it in the future.

I think of the many times in the recent past, when I had told myself, “This person is my friend. They are here to help me” and made a strange connection, to help reduce panic and ease the situation (mostly for myself – the other person was thankfully blithely unaware of this craziness and forced friendship).  But given that most health professionals are kind people, they probably wouldn’t mind.

Does a sense of connection ease panic? Does a sense of connection improve a situation? Does a sense of connection promote well-being?  

Is it really that simple? If so, why then are we not better at it, even if we seem to be programmed for it?

Would there be world peace if we simply connected better, if we shared the pain and sorrow, if we didn’t see ourselves so separate from others. If we didn’t try to guard ourselves as much – even in light of a menacing needle.

Is this self-protection? Is it ego? Just what gets in the way?

I know I get reclusive when I’m sick. My body gets into a state of guardedness that my mind doesn’t understand. It seems safer to be reclusive than to connect. It seems safer to not share this internal unhappiness, to spread the low-energy.

Yet, I understand life is more beautiful, more easy, more the way-its-supposed-to-be. We may only be a small skein in the larger web of life, but we need to attach, stay connected to the web to hold form.

In our webbed lives, how can we remain a stray skein away from the rest? All stray skeins need their silken counterparts to intermingle, to hold each other, to know that they are part of the web.

And even if the level of connections vary, the knowledge that we are more connected than we think, must help.

It must. If it helps me get through a menacing needle, it truly must.