Love doesnt require consensus

My cousin visited the other day.

I love her so much. She's genuinely the sister I think I always should have had. When the rest of our family seemed to pick themselves away one by one, for various reasons and in various directions, somehow we remained.

Quite often standing beside each other with question marks over our heads.

Because... why?

But we remained.

And in many ways, we are completely different humans.

She's a Cambridge-educated vet. Science, evidence, research. She has spent years learning about biology, anatomy, disease and the physical workings of living things.

I'm spiritual to the bone.

I'm fascinated by consciousness, energy, metaphysics, quantum theory and the parts of existence we still don't entirely understand. Then I'll inevitably wander into psychic phenomena, extraterrestrials, power structures, Freemasons, the Illuminati and another seventeen rabbit holes before I've finished my coffee.

Apparently this makes me a "conspiracy theorist."

Fine.

I'll add it to the bio.

But it would be far too simplistic to put my cousin in the science box and me in the spiritual one.

She knows she has psychic ability. She's interested in crystals. Her kids are really into crystals, which obviously delights me.

While she was here, she picked up a piece of my red jasper and held it for a while.

She could feel it belonged to her.

So it left with her.

Because from my perspective, the jasper had made its decision and I was no longer required in the transaction.

That's the thing about us. We're not really opposites in what we're willing to believe or explore. Our attention just naturally travels in different directions.

I can look at a thumbprint and see the rings of a tree. Then I'll start thinking about recurring patterns in nature, why the same shapes seem to echo through completely different things, whether there's something deeper connecting them and what any of that might tell us about reality.

She could look at the same thumbprint and probably explain the biology of the skin.

Or, more realistically, she'd be pulling a thorn out of an animal's paw pad while I'm wondering which species of tree its prints look like most.

Neither of us has failed to see what's there.

We've just noticed different things.

And actually, even astrologically, this tracks beautifully.

She's an Aries.

I'm a Libra.

Of course we are.

We literally sit opposite each other on the zodiac wheel. Aries and Libra occupy the same axis: self and other, independence and relationship. Two different orientations that don't really need to compete because together they create the whole axis.

Yin and yang.

And somehow, it completely works.

While she was here, I noticed myself doing something I hadn't really thought about before.

We talked about all sorts, and I found myself instinctively knowing which threads I could tug.

I'd pull one slightly and see where it went. Sometimes we'd explore it. Sometimes she'd offer something that made me think differently. Sometimes I'd offer something that made her think. Sometimes I'd sense we'd probably travelled as far down that particular road as either of us wanted to go, so we'd leave it there.

Not because I was hiding myself.

Not because I was avoiding disagreement.

And definitely not because I was sitting there thinking, You stay over there with your science, Susan.

There just wasn't anywhere we needed to get to.

We weren't trying to reach a shared conclusion.

And I think that's what stayed with me afterwards.

I've spent a lot of my life wanting to be understood. Not agreed with. There's a difference.

Being disagreed with doesn't particularly bother me. Being misunderstood does.

If someone misunderstands what I'm trying to say, I'll explain it another way. Then another. Maybe another for luck.

But sitting with my cousin made me think about what understanding actually requires.

Because she doesn't have to experience the world the way I do to understand me.

I don't have to experience it the way she does to understand her.

And even where we can't fully understand each other's perspective, we can still be curious about it.

Perhaps that's where humans get ourselves into trouble.

We seem to like consensus.

We organise ourselves into groups based on what we believe and then create names for everyone outside them.

Spiritual. Religious. Atheist. Scientific. Conspiracy theorist. Awake. Asleep. Left. Right. Mainstream. Alternative.

Pick a box.

Then defend it.

And eventually disagreement starts becoming distance.

But real people don't fit very well into those boxes.

My Cambridge-educated scientist cousin can pick up a crystal and know it's hers.

I can believe deeply in energy and psychic phenomena while still wanting to know what science has to say.

We can both change our minds.

We can both be wrong.

We can both see something the other hasn't noticed yet.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back to prisms lately.

Everything she's learned, studied, experienced and witnessed has shaped the angle through which she sees the world.

Everything I've learned, questioned, experienced and felt has shaped mine.

Give us exactly the same light and we're probably going to notice different colours.

That doesn't make either prism wrong.

And it doesn't mean the prisms can't move.

Something she says might alter my perspective. Something I say might alter hers. An idea might sit quietly for six months before suddenly making sense. Or we might explore something together and remain exactly where we started.

None of those outcomes is a failure.

Because the point of the conversation was never consensus.

It was connection.

And when agreement isn't the destination, there's suddenly much more room for curiosity.

What can you see from where you're standing?

Not because I secretly want to drag you over to my side.

Because perhaps you've noticed something I haven't.

And perhaps I've noticed something you haven't.

That's very different from simply "agreeing to disagree," which has always sounded slightly like two people politely putting down their weapons.

This doesn't feel like that.

There's no battle to end.

It's just two people looking at the same enormous, baffling existence from slightly different angles and occasionally comparing notes.

Obviously there are limits. Some differences aren't philosophical. Some beliefs affect how we treat other people and can become genuinely incompatible.

But so many don't.

Sometimes you see the tree.

Sometimes I see the forest.

Sometimes apparently I see a tree in your thumbprint.

And you still invite me round.

My cousin came to visit and, without either of us deliberately trying to teach the other anything, I think she reminded me how much I enjoy the space between two perspectives when nobody is trying to close it.

We can question. Laugh. Explore. Disagree. Learn something. Remain unconvinced. Change our minds. Not change our minds.

And none of it touches the love.

Maybe love doesn't require consensus because love was never supposed to make us the same.

Perhaps it gives us somewhere safe to be different.

You can look through your prism.

I'll look through mine.

And sometimes we can hold them up together and discover colours neither of us could see alone.