Brothers…

You see my brother and I are very different. I am a hyper-extrovert whereas my brother is much much more quiet… especially when we are with people. I like my life improvised, my brother likes it well defined. I am always running around doing stuff. All infinite amount of it. My brother is never in a rush, always doing things at quiet pace, and preferably from home. And as you can see from the photo, we are physically quite different. My brother is almost twice as big as me. His joints are huge and strong and he has never had a sprained ankle in his life. At the same time, I got a much smaller frame to work from, I was always among smaller boys in the class, and have sprained my ankles really many times….

I am telling you this so that you trust me that if you saw us separately, you would never believe we are brothers.

But you will definitely know we are, when you see us together.

Why?

Because there is a brother to brother resonance, a love flow, appreciation, same sense of humor, small teasing, lots of hugging and rolling over each other, same way in which we tease our parents, same jokes at same times, still sometimes kicking legs beneath the table and so many other small things that would just tell…

Now why am I telling you this? Because I realized something very important in brotherhood that I want to share, to tell out loud and clear. Brotherhood is a true transcendence of appearance, physical and psychological, it is on a conscious or unconscious level going deep within to find we are the same.  Having same father and mother seems to help this realization. But it is such a great step to realize you have another brother from another mother, and another, and another… And once you are able to melt the judgement and separation from more and more brothers, male or female ones, you will get better into dissolving the barriers even between people who are very challenging for you. Realizing that deep within hides another brother.

But it is much easier to practice first with easy examples, close brothers. I repeat, female or male.  Just for this blog I use word “brother” for simplicity and because it rhymes with father, mother and another, whereas sister rhymes with blister.  To brothers we are not jealous, envious, we do not want to be “right” but rather good, we care to give more than take and everything is true from the other side as well. Brotherhood is not about changing the brother to suit your image, but rather accepting the brot-her fully in the moment and supporting brot-her and brot-him in the best way we know.

I hope you understood my point. I hope you will find it a helpful practice as well as a reminder how precious moment(s) we share together.

Brother Du

PS. If you feel like amusing me, send me a calf to calf picture with your brother 😉