Lightness of Touch/Kiss The Joy As It Flies

I have weekend anxiety.  I did my darndest to script a fun weekend full of friends but just about everyone bailed on me for one reason or another.  Last weekend was the first since mid-June when I didn't feel like dying - it was such a relief to turn that corner.  But here I am -a swath of time looming in front of me with no concrete plans and it's terrifying - terrifying to be alone with my own thoughts. Really just terrifying to be alone.

Liza got me a book called "It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken" - it is surprisingly helpful.  I would be less than honest if I didn't admit that I still cling to the possibility that Patrick and I will be together again. We still love each other and where there is love, there has to be hope, right?  This book would have me divest myself of that hope.  I quote: "But some things can be fixed," you say: True but can your relationship be fixed?  Anything is possible but we'd say probably not.  Generally, if one person thinks the breakup is the right move, they're probably right even if it feels so wrong. Because unless there are two people putting on the coveralls and getting down in the trenches with some duct tape and superglue and a fierce determination, it isn't going to happen. Need more convincing?  How about this:  The person you loved took a good long look the awesomeness that is you, evaluated your relationship together, and said, "No thanks.  I'll try my luck elsewhere"...anyone who assesses you or your relationship as disposable is not worthy of your time or tears."

This makes sense to me....it's broken, he doesn't want to fix it, it's time to move on and find someone who is looking for me too - who won't take a pass and bail on me when there are conflicts and obstacles.  In the meantime I need to get good at this alone thing.  The reason last weekend worked was because it was filled with never ending distractions - I was surrounded with fun, hilarity, friends, music, cooking, new people to meet, catching up with old friends.   All of this was great, but it has to be a bit suspect when the only way I'm OK is with a constant dose of distraction. It all comes down to that clinging, attachment thing.  Clinging to the familiarity and comfort of the past, trying to replicate it, reconstructing it with new players even when it brings you the same pain - and fear of the future.

I like what Anne Morrow Lindbergh has to say about relationships:

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules.  The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's.  To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding.  There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing.  Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back - it does not matter which.  Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. 


The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment.  Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined.  One cannot dance well unless one is complete in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one but poised directly on the present step as it comes.  Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease, of timelessness, of the eternal.  It is what Blake was speaking of when he wrote:

He who bends to himself a joy

Doth the wing'ed life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

The dancers who are perfectly in time never destroy "the wing'ed life" in each other or in themselves. But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so difficult?  What makes us hesitate and stumble?  It is fear, I think, that makes one clutch greedily toward the next.  Fear destroys "the winged life."  But how to exorcise it?  It can only be exorcised by its opposite, love. When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation.  And it is this lack of fear that makes for the dance.  When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music - then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.

And that is my work and my prayer - to live gracefully in the moment today, whether or not it is populated with a riot of friends or whether I enjoy a solitary evening singing to myself or reading.  And even though the relationship with Patrick is over, it is alive in my heart and I am nourished by it  - and yet I know I mustn't cling to it.  My life has been buoyed by the love we had - we experienced heights of joy I can still summon. I am comforted to know he is still alive in the world and that he loves me still -  I know if I was ever in deep trouble he would come to me.  And I love him enough to kiss him to the wind with an unselfish prayer that he finds what he needs in his life.

The challenge today is to think about Blake's words.  Are you grasping and clutching at something or someone you are afraid to release, even though the very act of clinging is slowly killing that very thing?  Or, in your important relationships, are you "kissing the joy as it flies", knowing you can't pin the moment like a butterfly, that only by letting go, can you preserve something?  Ah...the impermanence of relationships and the challenge of treasuring just the moment and the day.  This Living Well thing is tough!