19. Presence in Absence
After years of focusing on presence and absence, I was walking down a street in Amsterdam in 2014. There, on a vacant storefront window, was written - in English - the following piece of graffiti.
eightysevenminutes
The whole world lives within a safeguarding, fish inside waves, birds held in the sky ... even the ground, the air, the water, every spark floating up from the fire: all subsist, exist, are held in the divine. Nothing is ever alone for a single moment.
— Rumi
Often, as people learn about the specifics of procedural memory, a certain despair sets in. “If I didn’t get what I needed early on, and I’m now stuck with an automated belief system that isn’t particularly good at trusting, where’s the hope?”
Adding insult to injury, procedural memory turns out to be remarkably resistant to change. As infant researcher Daniel Stern states it, “History creates inertia.” Experience follows expectation.
So, yes: many of us have something of a tall mountain to climb.
This is where our deepest hardwiring comes in. Said another way, this is where the underlying nature of our need, and the larger universe from which it emerges, comes into the picture.
Robert Frost wrote that each of us have “an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” Developmental psychologists the world over know we’re hardwired for relationship, that built within us is an undeniable thirst for the AND of love. Our need for presence isn’t a luxury, or some “add on” should we be fortunate enough to find it. We don’t choose our longing for presence any more than we choose our need of water.
Thirst is proof of water.
— Sufi wisdom saying
"We cannot live dry." - Mark Nepo
Only love fulfills.
As I’ve said previously, I believe our need for intimacy is the manifestation of a universe ready to meet it. Our thirst for presence is map, not aberration. Neither is it failing or indication of something wrong with us. Our thirst for belonging is our greatest guide. Original need requires original presence.
At this point, the only issue is whether we’re willing to allow our deep need for presence to change us, or if we'll keep our longing buried in negative certainty, locked inside lives as we’ve always known them.
It’s one thing to recognize our thirst for AND; it’s another thing altogether to make the decision to access it.
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Give your weakness to one who helps.
Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does is wait to hear her child.
Just a little beginning-whimper, and she’s there.
God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.
Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk of loving flow into you.
-Rumi