Many people ask Why do you keep holding onto the past? Why are you holding on to those beliefs or those thoughts about yourself? I would posit that the question should be How are you holding? How are you being held? The past is. Each moment, we are everything we have been up until now. With theories of spacetime, we are also, in a way, everything we will be as well. Time is a funny thing that way.
Are you holding onto everything you are, everything you thought you were, with a tight, unrelenting grip? Some of those things are shards of glass, dear. You don’t have to anymore. Are you holding them like a baby? Supporting their neck, cuddled in close? Even though sometimes they scream or smell bad? But attending to their needs and caring for them anyway. Which ones are which?
Can they be both? How do we let go? Do we really ever let go? Or do we hold space for them, and deal with them and care for them? Do we find an open place for them in the landscape of our mind so we can set them down to just be? Not to say that we never pick any of them up again, but we can make and maintain and hold that space in ourselves. We can have the option to put them back into the space instead of our arms. It’s a continuous process, holding space. And we don’t have to be “perfect” at it. But it just seems to keep happening. To hold space for this and this and this and just keep going. To be able to say “And yes, this too.” Over and over again. You’re still holding it all, just in different ways. You’re creating the space or inviting the space to be able to. This also allows for multiple seemingly contradictory or nuanced or complex truths to be held at the same time. And all of them are okay.
Some things may be more or less helpful, but they are all there anyway. Even though one might try and shut them away through any means of denial or dissociation, they’re still there. Do you want to be haunted by them spilling out from an old closet or do you want to find a place for them where they are less likely to sneak up on you? You don’t have to be performing a balancing act with a positive mess of things in your arms, piled precariously above your head.
How well can you care for a baby and be able to put her down for a nap if you’re also gripping onto the glass shards? How well can you bandage your own hands? But really how well can you? Do you need to bandage your own hands anymore or are you just holding on to the rugged survivalism of growing up without anyone else to bandage your hands?
How are you held? How do you allow yourself to be held? Is it possible that sharing the weight of some things with others could help? Could other people help to hold space? Could they make the journey lighter? Less arduous? Who holds you in their arms? Who holds you in the warm, wet hollows of their hearts? Who holds your tears in the shoulders of their t shirts? Do you allow yourself to be held? Could you learn how? It doesn’t have to be all at once.
When it’s too hard and you call someone and tell them of your hardship and they say Hold on, I’m coming right over. When you say something beyond belief and someone says Hold on, you’re saying what? When the 2ams hit and you feel like you can’t keep going and they say Just hold on. Hold on to the love I give you, hold on to life, hold on to your story, hold on to your seat, grip onto the armchair, I’m coming to hold you. I’m coming to hold space for the big thing, you don’t have to hold all this alone. We are together, you and I. Whether you like it or not, I hold on to pieces of you. Even if you leave, they will still be there. Let me hold you, let you hold me. This world isn’t made for holding alone. We have eachother for a reason.
Hold on to that thought, hold on to my words, keep them close to your chest, treasure them. Replace your old holding patterns with new ways of being. Let the plane land. If the universe holds all the stars and the earth holds all the inhabitants, why would you think that someone as small as you can hold the galaxies inside yourself alone? It’s too much, dear. You don’t have to crumble if you don’t want to.
When you hold space for things, you tap into some of the secret-not-so-secret holding power of the universe. The space between the atoms, the space inside the atoms, the space between the stars and planets and whatever else is going on out there. The infinite void is inside you and all around you at all times if you only look close enough. You’re not alone. You can learn from it and lean on it. The space is already there, all you have to do is invite it in. Reach out and grasp it. Hold it. Borrow it. Surrender to it. It is always holding you, whether you notice it or not. How is it that we’re on a micro and macro level most of everything is nothing, but we are the exact right size to feel sunlight against our skin and the sweetness of a ripe peach and love?
There really is something to this living stuff.
So hold on. Hold on through the dark of the night. Hold on to eachother. And also, when you’re ready, hold on like you’re a giddy child holding on to a swing that’s being pushed. Hold on to that feeling, you’ll know the one. Hold on to the earth as you dig your roots deep down into the rich soil. Hold yourself together and let yourself fall apart over and over again. And when the joy and laughter comes, don’t hold it in. Let it bounce around and brighten up the space. Because the space is always there and you don’t have to hold it all alone.
