What is it with age that makes us more fragile and less agile?
Naturally, you would assume that with age we’d learn to dissolve the walls around us.
But what we can see outside shows that we’re much faster at building new than breaking the old ones.
Fragility at the core
As years pass by, we learn more about ourselves, set boundaries, and become better at fostering healthier relationships.
Yet, somehow, we simultaneously shut down in other ways.
There’s that one part of us that we shield and protect with our lives. That one area, somewhere deep within, that we feel if another scar gets there, we won’t be able to take it. One more failure, one more rejection, one more heartbreak, one more word forgotten, and we’ll shatter into pieces.
What we build is a shield that not only protects what’s inside but encapsulates us whole, and in many ways, leaving us isolated from experiencing the novelty, mystery, and magic of life.
The paradox of protection
I wonder if there’s any correlation between the thickness of the walls we build and the deepening of the fragility of that core area we’re trying to protect.
Maybe that’s one of those paradoxes in life, where to preserve something as fragile as that, you need not build walls around it, but expose it to the sun, air, and the most fundamental elements of human life.
Perhaps we’re not equipped to protect those areas solely through our own attention, but rather in conjunction with others.
The mere witnessing by others of the existence of those brittle parts we possess is what nurtures and soothes the ache.
Fight fire with fire. Just as you restore your energy with movement, find inspiration through action, and gain more creative energy by releasing some, we protect ourselves not by concealing but by exposing the rawest parts we carry to the right pair of eyes.
The forgotten art of holding one another
Why are the things we need most always the most difficult to seek?
Why are the words we hunger to speak the hardest ones to release?
We play all those games, we weigh every word we speak or hear, because we know how little we can take. We know it in our bones how fragile our composure really is. Even if it never weaves outwardly when we leave the borders of our safe nest, what’s underneath the surface is often not much more than composure as solid as a house of cards.
The reason why we never feel safe to crumble is because we’ve forgotten the subtle art of holding each other. We’ve forgotten the tender emotional embrace that is a prerequisite between two people who are about to expose themselves to each other. It’s not hidden in some big words of comfort, in complex theories, or eagerness to heal ourselves out of our pain.
It’s certainly not found in the desire to save someone, fix someone, and other clever ways our ego stimulates itself.
It resides in the presence and stillness that one person becomes to contain the undertow that another soul carries.
Just two steady, but soft eyes locked in on the other, not offering any judgment, not even advice, but a simple understanding that it’s okay to just be whichever way necessary.
An offering of silence that speaks how whatever is within is okay. It doesn’t have to be analyzed, healed, corrected, sedated, or fixed.
A stillness of air that breathes the words: I am here for you. You are safe to be.
Containment vs the urge to fix
Only when we can accept another without a trace of judgment or attempt to fix them, can we establish safe ground for their walls to dissolve.
This happens when the person can enter depths in which you are drowning. They might not have had the same experience as you, but they have enough understanding to be able to accept that your reality, as unfamiliar and strange as it might be to them, is without a doubt real.
Only then can true containment happen. Anything less than that, and a person starts to believe there’s something wrong with their experience, and they need to be fixed.
True healing isn’t the absence of pain, but finally being seen and accepted just as you are.
Meet Me In the space between
More than anything, I wish we’d learn how to be with each other in silence. Not the absence of words, but space filled with acceptance of one another.
I wish we’d learn how to be together without any need to express our mental chatter, and instead, let what’s real speak to us.
I wish we’d learn how to sit with each other without any pressure to constantly do or entertain. Just the mere presence – that is the company I crave. Mutually gifting each other with the most vibrant parts we have.
More than anything, I wish we didn’t perceive one another as who’s more right or wrong, but curiously observe what a strange but familiar world each one carries within.
