The Light Was Never Gone

If you know me personally, you already know I love geeking out on research — the brain, cells, mind/body connection, all of it fascinates me, even when I only understand a fraction of the actual science.

This week I came across a study by a researcher named Rhys Mould that I found intriguing, and not for the reason you'd expect.

So what was the study about?

Mitochondria — the part of our cells that makes energy.

Dr Mould took mitochondria and sealed them into separate containers — no chemical connection, no physical contact — to see if one could still affect the other despite the separation.

And what happened?

Nothing should have let one talk to the other.

And yet, he stressed one.

The other responded anyway. Immediately.
Not eventually — right away, in real time, as if the separation had never actually happened.

The separation didn't actually separate them.

What stayed with me wasn't the mechanism.

It was what it revealed about separation itself. And about time.

Because I think we do this too, in ourselves.

How many times do we feel separated from ourselves?

How many times do we take a desire — the thing we actually want for ourselves — and put it in its own sealed vial, because somewhere along the way we were taught it isn't important enough to take up room in our actual life?

We tell ourselves: later.

Later, when I have time.

Later, when the kids are older.

Later, when my partner finally gets that promotion.

Later, when I get the raise.

Later, when I finish this project for my boss.

So we numb.
We throw ourselves into work.
We scroll for hours.
We binge another show so we don't have to feel the longing.

We treat later like a promise — like the desire will simply wait quietly in its vial until we're ready to open it.

But here's what the study made me really sit with.

The response was never delayed.
Not once.
The moment the stress hit one container, the other reacted instantly, without permission, without being asked.

So why do we believe there's a delay in us?

I don't think later is really about time.
I think it's about permission. If the response is scheduled for some future date, we never have to sit with the harder question underneath it: am I allowed to want this now, before I've done anything else to earn it?

But the desire doesn't wait for our permission any more than the mitochondria waited for a channel to travel through.

The stressor in the study was a single chemical.
In our lives, it's the deadline.
The impossible schedule.
The thing our kids need right now.
The project due for our boss.
The demands from our partner.
The dear friend who needs you right now.
The way we say yes when we mean no.

And every time that stress hits, the sealed-off part of us responds too. It just doesn't come back out looking like desire.

It comes back out as resentment.

As exhaustion that doesn't match the actual hours worked.

As anger with nowhere clear to send it.

The desire never left.

It just came back changed, the way the stress in one container came back on the other side as something different than it started as.

This, I think, is the real work.

Not fixing the exhaustion.

Not managing the resentment better.

Shining a light on it long enough to recognize what it actually is.

Because underneath the tiredness you can't quite explain, underneath the irritation that shows up too fast, there's a desire that's been asking for room for a long time. It just learned to speak a different language so you'd finally have to notice it.

And when you can finally see it for what it is, something shifts that isn't only about you.

You stop managing a war nobody else can see.

What's true in you starts to move through you — into your relationships, into your work, into the way you can sit in a room without bracing for the next thing.

Not because you tried harder to connect.

Because you stopped being at war with yourself long enough to let connection happen on its own.

The light was never gone.

You just hadn't been shown where to look yet.

With Love From The Desert Sky,

Cathy

P.S. — The study, if you want it: Mould et al., "Non-chemical signalling between mitochondria," Frontiers in Physiology, 2023.