Love is Spaciousness
Feel; it’s human.
To know feeling, not simply your own, but the feeling of others is one of the most wondrous experiences humanity gifts us. I know, like many of you, that the experience of “feeling” itself can feel scary too. The marvel of the body is that it responds—never static, always feeling.
So, when any of us feel terrified, our whole body feels it too, which can (unfortunately sometimes) make it feel as though terror is and will be the beginning and end of our (collective) existences. This experience can feel especially true when compounded with deep-rooted pain, or trauma. Our sensitivity to pain heightens as we practice a life without releasing it. So, of course, we seize up and lash out when we are tasked with holding space for the pain of another—especially if we perceive them as not holding space for ours. So, space for our sensitivities is of requisite importance.
The dividing pretext all of us have been indoctrinated into— myself included—is that relationships should add to the convenience of your life and, hopefully, in some respects, they all do, but people—if they’re being honest within the relationship—are (sometimes) very inconveniencing.
Our feelings. Our wants. Our needs. Our desires. Our hurts. Our habits. Our dreams. We will never always be convenient for each other, and the hope is that there can be compassion—even joy— found in that inconvenience. Gently approaching these perceived inconveniences with care-filled invitation creates the radical space for the full spectrum of feeling to take place care-fully.
Imagining a reality in which you can earnestly greet loved ones with invitations like: please tell me your truth, though it may hurt. Though pain is an inconvenience. Please let me go two hours out of “my” way to help you, because I see that you’re overwhelmed. Though blocks of time taken out of the day can be an inconvenience. Please let me help pay for this because we both know it’s important, and you don’t have it right now. Though spending money can be an inconvenience (especially during the late stage).
It can be difficult. And, of course, the idea of difficulty is much easier to digest than the reality of it. Yet, difficulty alone is not a reason we stop trying. That’s why we’re in these relationships together. The hope is that we can wade through the waters of difficulty with each other, for each other and for the generations to come.
I engage with the necessary hurt now, so that there’s space for healing what I may not even have the capacity to imagine for our future selves and future generations (which to me are one in the same). All of this difficulty can bring us together, if we choose it; we can sustain an earnest, mutual support of one another in the face of these difficulties, even when we ourselves can feel waterlogged by deeply intimate interior conflicts.
It cannot be understated though, that there can be no tolerance for abuse. Abuse goes beyond difficulty into the territory of interpersonal terrorism, which swiftly and without hesitation needs to be let go of though, I know, sometimes that kind of freedom is unfortunately is inaccessible for people. Love and abuse, as bell hooks wrote, cannot co-exist, and though I have views that complicate this statement, I do believe it true.
Inconveniences arise when we accept the value and time of the people’s lives we share in our relationships. Difficulty happens when an inconvenience or conflict requires more from us to resolve than we are accustomed to. It is precisely when we arrive at the point of difficulty that we are asked by the circumstances at play to be more spacious.
The first step is to slow down—take a decompressing breath. A present clarity is needed so that we can assess our ability to cocreate and engage with the viable realities that can contend with and integrate the present difficulty.
Empathy can only exist within spaciousness, and Love is spaciousness. Spaciousness allows you to look beyond yourself in order to build a collective awareness. These dreams, times and wounds are shared, and being able to give and receive help during times that ask more of us is one of the many ways we can remain present within community.
Spaciousness offers us “space” to initiate sensitive dialogues involving tender topics, ask questions with a generosity of spirit, and invite the traumatized—me included—out of the shells built out of their belief(s) of care scarcity. Spaciousness offers an amending reality to that one in which care is scarce. This spacious reality is the truest one, because care isn’t scarce. It’s as plentiful as we are and as available as we allow. The difficulty in making this spaciousness available is that if we do not practice spaciousness within ourselves, then we stunt our ability to offer spaciousness for others. When we offer ourselves spaciousness as a consistent practice, then we expand our ability to give and receive love, empathy, and help—which in some ways are the same thing—while also retaining a truly loving devotion to ourselves. How mirific?
To have a greater capacity for the depth of emotions we experience while also sharing them with others and joining capacities is something I consider a mundane blessing, though I hope—through doing this work collectively—to see it continually become more commonplace.
Feelings take many shapes. They move and swirl and metamorphosize within the body. Our bodies as the vessels for these e(lectric)motions, move and change, taking many shapes, as well. We are meant to do the same—allow ourselves to continually change with deference to our truth(s). The lexicon of truth within the body is mapped by our emotions. Changing with our truths as we are guided by our feelings requires trust and patience for and with ourselves, and this process is a gateway to constructing regenerative spaciousness for ourselves and our relationships.
Hopefully through this transmutative process we begin to develop a sensitivity that allows us to reshape how we view all of our relationships; there is an inherent interconnectedness and interdependency in being human that doesn’t always get recognized, because our colonial programming benefits from separationist thinking. Working to undo this separationist thinking is our charge, so that we can work and feel through the mutualistic symbiosis we’re built for with each other.
If we are able to fully realize that one of the beauties of living is to be able to change with and be changed by all of the relationships that we share space and spaciousness with in life— beyond a human-centric lens—then vast vistas of infinite spaciousness roll outwards within us, and we can recognize and act out our deepest reservoirs of radical love, as well as radical honesty, therefore allowing us to engage a radical healing together.