Holding Parallel Truths, Part II

Since writing Holding Parallel Truths, I have been unable to unsee it. Compartmentalization is everywhere. It appears in strangers, in people I know intimately, and most uncomfortably, in myself. Some people move through it like masters effortlessly separating feeling from function, presence from preservation. Others feel like tired students, still trying to learn the skill, still trying to understand where one emotional room ends and another begins. I recognize both. I have been both.

There is a particular exhaustion that comes from trying to learn something while simultaneously living inside of it. It reminds me of myself in middle school and high school sitting in classrooms, hearing every word, yet retaining nothing. Not because I wasn’t listening but because I was overwhelmed by the act of receiving itself. Everything came in at once, and nothing had anywhere to settle. I realize now that I move through the emotional world in much the same way.

I take things in. I take people in. I take in the subtle shifts in tone, the pauses between words, the invisible currents beneath what is spoken. And then I do what has always come natural to me: I internalize them. I turn them over and over, searching for meaning. Digging. Not delicately like a lady should or would when she’s planting her garden or tending to her vegetables…but instinctively almost animalistically. There is nothing pretty about it. It is raw and compulsive, this need to understand. But lately, I have begun to question whether understanding requires absorption. What if my only responsibility is to witness?

There is a difference between absorbing and observing, though I am only just beginning to understand it. Absorbing makes everything mine. It embeds itself into my nervous system, my body, my sense of self. Observing, however, allows distance. it allows presence without possession. It allows me to remain in tact. Not everything that touches me is meant to become me. And not everything that touches you is meant to become you either. And maybe this is the next lesson in holding parallel truths: that I can be deeply present without being deeply consumed. That I can honor my instincts to notice without surrendering myself to notice.