All of Us, Dots

The artist Yayoi Kusama covers everything in dots. Pumpkins, canvases, walls, her own body, other people’s bodies, entire rooms. She has been doing it since childhood, when she started seeing the world dissolve into patterns. A self that felt dangerously close to disappearing into everything around it. She called it self-obliteration. The dissolution of the boundaries between herself and the world.

To me that sounds maybe like the most human longing there is.

I have always longed for deep connection. Not the kind that stays on the surface – the small talk, the catching up, the questions that don’t want to hear the true answer. But the other kind. The kind where something passes between two people that doesn’t need to be explained. Where you meet on levels that most conversations never reach. Where for a moment you are lifted clean out of yourself – out of time, out of the noise – because another person is genuinely, completely there with you.

This longing to merge. And yet – there is always some separation, isn’t there? A particular kind of sadness that doesn’t have a name. You are here. They are there. And no matter how close you get, there will always be a last millimeter that cannot be crossed. A membrane. The skin that ends where the other begins.

Maybe it was never really about merging. Maybe what we’re looking for is something quieter – and at the same time, so precious. Not to dissolve into another person. But to have someone want to know our inner world. To be curious about what’s really happening underneath. To be seen there – not just on the surface, but in the parts that don’t come up in small talk. Maybe that’s the whole longing, right there. Not the merge, but the interest.

Seeing the sea. Watching a film. Standing in front of a painting, listening to a song – and knowing, in that exact moment, that the other person would understand. The excitement of wanting to share what you’re experiencing, and knowing they would already know. I have this with one friend. When she reads this, she will know.

We are just molecules, she said once to me. Chaos. Orbiting each other. Colliding. Bouncing off. Sometimes sticking for a while. And maybe what we’re longing for is exactly that – to dissolve a little. To stop being so sealed inside ourselves.

I think about the people I have felt truly close to. Not just known, not just liked – but felt. The ones where the silence was never empty. There are very few of them. I think that’s just how it is. Not a failure of love or effort, but something structural, something built into the condition of being a self at all.

And sometimes that makes me sad. To be seen only on the surface, when so much is happening underneath – that’s a particular kind of loneliness.

But maybe sadness turns into hope: if these are the levels I naturally live on, maybe the next step is to create more spaces where others can meet me there. Keep the door open a little wider.

Kusama is 95 years old. She still makes dots. Still covers everything in the same gesture, repeated endlessly. Maybe it’s not repetition for its own sake.

Maybe it’s this endless hope. The continuous search. The refusal to stop trying to make connection visible, dot by dot.

Is merging possible? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it is not about merging in the first place. Maybe reaching out and curiosity themselves are the point.