Blog

Many of you are aware of an empty space deep within you. Often we’re completely unconscious of it, but occasionally we become aware of this deep, deep yearning, a loneliness, a desire for something outside of us.

Sometimes it can be mild, like a craving, and sometimes the emptiness is so great that we feel a kind of frantic desperation, an overwhelming desire to have something come in and fill that incomplete, empty part of us. We are needy beyond our ability to bear it. We are desperate not to feel the emptiness anymore.

And sometimes that thing we seek does indeed come into our lives! In a moment, we feel complete; and not just complete; content. We feel whole. We no longer have that deep, gnawing, unsettling feeling, that neediness, that sense of being incomplete. In that moment life seems perfect. We have all we need.

And then something shifts–it is so often hard to know exactly what–and the thing that made us happy goes out of our lives again. It’s gone. And we’re back to that emptiness, right back where we started, longing for something to come in from outside of us and complete us.

If you’re a typical person, you just had this experience 8 to 10 times while you read the opening of this blog. The emptiness I have in mind is your lungs, and the thing that comes in and makes everything ok is the breath. We do it without thinking about it, but it defines life. We began, in this particular body, anyway, when we took our first breath, and we will end precisely when we take our last.

How do we know, as we let go of this breath, that there is going to be a next breath? (That isn’t a guarantee, you know. And in fact, I can guarantee that for each of us, there will come a time when there is not a next breath; there will come the time when we have breathed our last breath, and it’s over.)

Knowing this; why do we trust in life enough to let go of the breath we have right now?

Could you imagine going through life clutching onto each breath, hanging on, reluctant to let it go, fearful that the next one won’t be there, or that it won’t be as good as the one we have?

And what would life be like if we actually practiced that way with our breath? Can you begin to sense the desperation that would increase towards the end of every single breath as we clutch, clinging fearfully, wondering if there will be another, slowly choking the life out of the breath we have (and thereby keeping the one we need, the next one, from coming into our lives?)

For a person with healthy, normal breathing, this would be insanity. The lungs only work when they’re emptied regularly. They are made to be emptied out from what they are holding now so that they can take in the next thing that is to come.

We do it so easily with breath. It would seem insane not to do it with the breath.

We don’t do it quite so easily with people, do we.

At least I don’t. Historically, I have a tendency to brace for “what if the next one doesn’t come? What if there’s not enough for me?” And, historically, during my less skillful years of practice, I would clutch, cling and hold on too tightly to each experience with people because I was fearful that the next one wouldn’t come. And the insanity of that is as clear to me now as it would be if I were to do it with my breath.

I’m not saying that allowing people to come in and out of our lives as freely as we allow breaths to come in and out of our lungs is easy. It’s not. It can be quite difficult, for me, at least. But I believe it works exactly the same way. I have found it to work this way in my life, my marriage, my friendships, and in Touch Practice.

I have an emptiness inside of me that is designed to hold deep, meaningful engagement with people. I think that space was designed that way, just like my lungs were. People come in, for a moment I breathe them in fully, there is a sense of completeness together, and then I let go. If I clutch someone or cling, then one of us begins to suffocate. If I let them go, there’s room for the next experience.

But I have to trust that there will be a next “breath,” and that, my friends, that is the hard part, for me.

We seem to have an easy enough time trusting the next breath for our lungs; most of us take it for granted, in fact. That last breath will catch many of us by surprise. But for me, it seems harder to trust that the flow of people in our lives, the friends, the partners, the social companions and spiritual practice partners, that these have been lined up for us by All That Is in the same way that our breaths are lined up for us.

But I’m pretty sure they are. At least I have come to believe they are. Stronger than that; I have come to experience that they are.

In Touch Practice, there is no “Holding Others as a Sacred Practice” without also “Letting Others Go as a Sacred Practice.” The structure of the practice is “breathe in, breathe out” as much as it is “hold on, let go.” Holding people and releasing them forms a complete system, a kind of muscular opposition, which produces wholeness. But I don’t always do it as easily as I breathe. I never get in the middle of a perfect breath and think, “oh, I don’t want this to end.”

With people, I  sometimes have to be more conscious of breathing out. My instinct is to clutch, to hang out, to get in the middle of a delicious engagement with someone and think, “oh, this is great! I don’t want this one to end.”

And my personal history is that I am better with people on the inhale than I am with the exhale. Oh, I love taking new people into my life! A new friend, co-worker, spiritual practice partner, great conversationalist, a new phase of deeper encounter in my marriage, a workout buddy–can you hear that sound like a giant vacuum cleaner? That’s me, breathing in. More. Love it.

Exhaling? Not so good.

What does the exhale look like with people? People die on us; or they move, geographically. They lose interest in us or we lose interest in them. Sometimes people disappoint us, profoundly, and we have to exhale. Sometimes a person goes from being hero to villain in our lives; we see a part of them that was submerged which we cannot live with. Suspending judgment and opinionation is a way we exhale, a way of releasing our grasp on people.

Sometimes perfectly good and loving people can’t do for us what we need; they don’t have the particular skills we are looking for, or the things that interest us differ too greatly. Exhale. Certain types of relationships are wonderful and finite, they exist for a period of time, rather than forever, and looking back on them, they were meant to be that way. They were “transitional” relationships that move us forward, but don’t last forever. Exhale. Any time we have a sense of, “this person should be other than the way they are right now,” it might be a good time to exhale. Release the grasp a little bit.

Exhaling people is a form of grief process, the process of letting go of things we’ve lost. (Is that too heavy for your Saturday morning coffee blog? Really?)

Are you bummed about the fact that you just let go of several dozen expired breaths in the past few minutes? Gain and loss are part of the normal cycle of breathing and that doesn’t seem to bother you at all. How come “grief process” bugs us so much?

Grief is the other half of getting to live this life. It’s the price of admission to this all-you-can-eat experience.

Grief isn’t that big a deal, to be truthful. (I’m not trying to be insensitive; I’m trying to be truthful.) We can make grief a big deal if we frame it as something exceptional or unusual that comes into our life, something that isn’t supposed to be. But it’s not that. Grief happens at the end of every single breath. You experience loss, and you let it go.

If you propose that inhaling without exhaling is healthy normal breathing, go try if for a moment, and after you explode and clean up, come back and keep reading.

I’m proposing that learning to love and be loved, and learning to grieve (to let go, to experience loss) can’t work any other way. If you want to make room for one, you must make room for the other. They are a dynamic pair that drive each other, just like breaths do.

If I keep my relational lungs full of the experiences I’ve had, then how do I take in the next experience? Exactly. I’ve gone through so much of my life holding my breath, which means I haven’t been as available for next breaths as I might like.

How many physical breaths are there for your lungs? Can you number them; do you see them all lined up ahead of you? Can you guarantee you’ll have enough? I’m guessing the answer is “no.” But I also bet that you trust, instinctively, that they will come, and that there will be enough for you. And that trust allows you to breathe easily without thinking about it.

And how many people are there for you? Can you number them; do you see them all lined up ahead of you? Can you guarantee you’ll have enough?

Breathe out, brothers. That empty space? It’s ok. It’s healthy. We were designed that way. The emptiness is there so that the next thing has room to come in. I count billions of people around us, but I can’t see a single breath.  I have to trust there will be plenty of both.

Have thoughts you’d like to share?

Touch Practice is a sacred practice for me, and part of that is keeping confidences sacred. While a name and e-mail address are required to post a comment, feel free to use just your first name, or a pseudonym if you wish. Your e-mail address will never be seen by or shared with anyone. It is used to prevent spam and inappropriate comments from appearing in the blog. I’d really like to hear from you!