Separation anxiety is the price we pay for the privilege of existing as individuals. Imagine that for a trillion, trillion, trillion years, we were all part of an infinite oneness—a state where nothing is distinguished from anything else because there is no “other” to speak of. No relationships, no interactions, no foreground or background. Total unity. In that oneness, experience itself can’t emerge, because experience depends on distinguishable entities, on subjects and objects, on perceivers and the perceived.
So we are threaded out, each of us, from this oneness for a moment—maybe a hundred years, maybe shorter, maybe longer. The very fact that we can have relationships, interact, and discover the world comes from our separateness. It’s why we can appreciate a sunrise, laugh at jokes, or fall in love: all these experiences are only possible because we’re distinct from everything else.
But that separateness carries a deep undercurrent of anxiety—a kind of existential homesickness. It’s that feeling of having lost an immeasurable wholeness we can’t directly remember, yet sense at the core of our being. I call it separation anxiety, though it’s far more fundamental than the term usually implies. Psychologists and neurologists might point to various evolutionary or developmental explanations—maternal bonding, survival mechanisms, early childhood experiences—but none of these fully capture the spiritual dimension: we sense we were once part of something perfect and indivisible. Now, out here on our own, we grieve a connection we can’t even recall with our minds, but still feel in our bones.
It begins from the moment we’re born. We cry not simply because we’re breathing for the first time, or because of bright hospital lights, but because some part of us knows we’ve been cast out into separateness. It’s awkward and disorienting. We spend our whole lives dealing with it in different ways—sometimes labeling it stress, fear of abandonment, or the need for external validation. These are all just human attempts to explain the same root phenomenon: we ache for the oneness we left behind.
The beauty is that in becoming separate, we gain the power to truly experience. We can taste new foods, form friendships, explore ideas, and create art. We can delight in the cosmic dance in ways that pure oneness could never offer. That’s the paradox: to be conscious of love, we must first know what it’s like not to have it—or at least to perceive that we don’t.
Separation anxiety, then, isn’t a flaw or an error. It’s the subtle, ever-present reminder of our origin: our temporary, necessary rift from an infinite whole. The “pebble in our shoe” never goes away, no matter how old we are, no matter how many accomplishments we pile up, because on some level we’re still wrestling with the same cosmic truth: we came from everything, and we will return to everything, but for now, we’re distinct and alone. And that is precisely why we get to experience life so vividly.