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The Space Between Us Is Not Empty · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: hey!
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
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  SPEAKER_00: This week we've been looking at the possibility that the weave may be more real than
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: the separation.
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  SPEAKER_00: We started by wondering whether we are ever truly isolated threads.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then we looked at what we send into the weave.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yesterday,
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  SPEAKER_00: yesterday I thought about all the pieces of other people that somehow become part of
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  SPEAKER_00: who we are.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to look at the space
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  SPEAKER_00: Because we usually think of space as emptiness.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is me over here.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is you over there.
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  SPEAKER_00: And between us is distance.
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  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I'm starting to wonder whether that distance is as empty as it looks.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about sitting quietly with someone that you love.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is talking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is happening that would look especially interesting from across the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yet, the silence can feel completely different from being alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why?
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  SPEAKER_00: The air is the same.
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  SPEAKER_00: The furniture hasn't changed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Still, another person's presence alters the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes dramatically.
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  SPEAKER_00: We know this without thinking about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: A person walks through the door and we relax.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone else enters and our shoulders tighten before we've even figured out why.
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  SPEAKER_00: A friend sits beside us during a difficult moment and may say almost nothing,
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  SPEAKER_00: yet somehow the burden feels different because they are there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something is happening in that space.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe psychology can explain a lot of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: We read faces, posture, tone, memory, tiny signals that our conscious mind barely notices.
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  SPEAKER_00: Human beings are incredibly sensitive to one another.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I find that amazing rather than disappointing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Understanding part of the mechanism Doesn't make the experience less meaningful, though.
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  SPEAKER_00: It tells us just how deeply built for connection that we may be.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think about the times when somebody has been grieving and there simply were no useful words.
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  SPEAKER_00: We tend to panic around that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We want to say the right thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: We want to fix the silence because silence feels like failure.
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  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes love knows better than that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the most honest thing that we can offer is presence.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sit down.
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  SPEAKER_00: Stay a while.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let the person know that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let them know that for this moment at least, they're not carrying everything by themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: No speech can replace that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe that gives us a clue about the weave itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Connection is not always an exchange of information.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is simply two lives sharing space honestly.
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  SPEAKER_00: That happens in happier moments too.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can be in a room with people that you've known for years.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everybody doing something different.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there's a kind of ease in it, isn't there?
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  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has to entertain anybody.
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  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to prove that you belong there.
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  SPEAKER_00: You just do.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that that may be one of the greatest gifts another person can give us.
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  SPEAKER_00: The freedom not to perform.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a deep form of love in being allowed simply to exist beside someone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why loneliness is not solved merely by putting people in the same building.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can be surrounded and still feel completely alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Physical distance is not the only distance that humans experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the person beside us feels a thousand miles away.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes somebody hundreds of miles away can feel strangely close
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  SPEAKER_00: because they know us,
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  SPEAKER_00: remember us, and care what happened to them, care what happens to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps the space between people is not really measured very well with a ruler.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's measured by attention.
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  SPEAKER_00: That thought keeps pulling at me.
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  SPEAKER_00: It just does.
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  SPEAKER_00: Attention may be one of the ways we cross the apparent distance between lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I truly pay attention to you, something changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: For a moment, I stop treating you as scenery in my own story.
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  SPEAKER_00: Your experience becomes real to me, not identical to mine.
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  SPEAKER_00: And not absorbed into mine, but just real.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that may be where empathy begins.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it might explain why being ignored can hurt so much.
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  SPEAKER_00: To be unseen is not merely to miss attention.
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  SPEAKER_00: It can feel as though our existence has somehow become lighter in the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: We all need somebody somewhere.
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  SPEAKER_00: To register that we are here.
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  SPEAKER_00: That may sound almost too simple.
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  SPEAKER_00: It really might.
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  SPEAKER_00: But think about what happens when someone remembers something that you told them months ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned it maybe once.
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  SPEAKER_00: They remembered.
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  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly, you know that the conversation did not simply vanish after it ended.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something crossed the space.
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  SPEAKER_00: They carried a little piece of your life with them.
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  SPEAKER_00: That feels good because it tells us that we mattered outside of the moment.
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  SPEAKER_00: I suspect that love does that constantly.
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  SPEAKER_00: It carries pieces across the gaps.
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  SPEAKER_00: A worry, a memory, A laugh.
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  SPEAKER_00: Concern for someone who isn't even in the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can be driving along and suddenly think of a person that you haven't spoken to in months.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's no cosmic reason for it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some tiny association in the brain brought them forward.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: The important part comes next.
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  SPEAKER_00: What do we do With that awareness, we can let it pass.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or we can send a message.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you crossed my mind today.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love that phrase.
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  SPEAKER_00: You crossed my mind.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about what that says.
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  SPEAKER_00: For a moment, another human life entered our inner world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we act on it, something invisible becomes visible.
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  SPEAKER_00: The distance gets crossed.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's ordinary enough that we hardly notice it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yet I think, I think it is remarkable.
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  SPEAKER_00: We spend much of life crossing invisible spaces.
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  SPEAKER_00: A look across a room.
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  SPEAKER_00: A phone call.
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  SPEAKER_00: A hand reaching for another hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: A familiar voice saying our name.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of those things makes two people become one person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Connection does not erase individuality.
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  SPEAKER_00: It does something more interesting.
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  SPEAKER_00: It allows individuality to be shared.
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  SPEAKER_00: I remain myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: You remain yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: But something exists between us now that neither one of us could create alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: A friendship is like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: So is trust.
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  SPEAKER_00: So is a family.
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  SPEAKER_00: So is a community.
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  SPEAKER_00: They exist between people.
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  SPEAKER_00: You cannot point to friendship on an x-ray.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you cannot put trust on a kitchen scale.
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  SPEAKER_00: But nobody Nobody would seriously claim that those things are unreal.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of the most powerful realities in human life exist exactly there in
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  SPEAKER_00: the space between us.
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  SPEAKER_00: That makes the way that we treat that space very important.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can fill it with suspicion until nobody feels safe enough to speak.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can make it transactional where every kindness comes with an invoice.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or we can make enough room for another person to arrive as themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I know that doesn't require agreement on everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of the mistakes that we sometimes make is believing connection demands sameness.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it does.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the weave would be pretty dull if every thread were identical.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, wouldn't it?
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  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that tapestry.
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  SPEAKER_00: Connection asks for recognition more than sameness.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can disagree with you and still know you are real.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can fail to understand your experience and remain curious about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I can protect my boundaries without pretending that the person on the other side
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  SPEAKER_00: of them has ceased to matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: It took practice, but I can do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is harder than Sorting everyone into neat categories, but it's also definitely more human.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is part of what the love force does.
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  SPEAKER_00: It keeps crossing the space.
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  SPEAKER_00: It keeps reminding us that distance does not have to become disconnection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not every gap can be closed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some should not be.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are times when distance protects us and love can respect that too.
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  SPEAKER_00: But even then, we don't have to fill the distance with hatred.
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  SPEAKER_00: There can be space and still be humanity.
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  SPEAKER_00: That possibility matters.
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  SPEAKER_00: The more I think about this weave,
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  SPEAKER_00: the less I picture a giant net tying everybody tightly together.
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  SPEAKER_00: That sounds exhausting.
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  SPEAKER_00: I picture something that's more alive.
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  SPEAKER_00: Threads touching, separating, crossing again.
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  SPEAKER_00: Carrying little bits of color from every contact.
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  SPEAKER_00: Space remains, but the space is part of the pattern it's all connected to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe relationships need that too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Enough closeness to be known.
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  SPEAKER_00: Enough room to remain ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: And something, something living in between.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something made from attention Memory,
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  SPEAKER_00: Trust, and all of the little ways that we tell another person, you are here.
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  SPEAKER_00: I see you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Your life has reached mine.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the space between us was never empty at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is where much of love has been living.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love you guys very, very much, and I hope you know that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I hope you feel it every day.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know what I need you to do, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Go out there and pass that love on, okay?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Later, Gators.
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  SPEAKER_00: See you tomorrow.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Every story, every voice In this love we all rejoice Infinite Threads, here we go.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome your friends, enjoy the show.