Open Palm

When I was 21 and living in Glasgow, I met a young British South African attorney at an internet café.  Drew was bright, poised, and handsome, but with his stiffness and my sensitivity, we were both having trouble making friends of the Scots.  Drew impressed me with stories of being the only white person at concerts and rallies during apartheid, of going on walkabout in the bush, and of befriending black South Africans at university.  I felt grateful for the sense of companionship and adventure, but my heart resisted every step of our developing intimacy.  I could feel Drew subtly molding me to his preferences – approving of my more proper outfits, flattering my intelligence over my heart, and encouraging me to develop my business ideas at the expense of things that moved my soul.  As I approached the end of my visa, I struggled to reconcile the compelling security and adoration he offered with the frustrating, frightening sense that I was meant for something more expansive in a life I could not yet see.

Someone once told me that there are two ways to hold something: clenching your fingers around it to negate the natural pull of gravity or turning your hand over so that it rests gently in your palm.  Grasping requires effort, distorts what you cling to, and shields it from view.  Holding with an open palm leaves it fully visible, whole, and free.  If we adopt this approach to life, what stays with us is purer and more truly ours.  I told Drew this story as I boarded the bus for a young backpackers’ tour of Ireland, hoping for some adventure and perspective.  As I looked out the window to wave goodbye, he was standing on the sidewalk with his arm outstretched and a quarter nestled effortlessly in his open palm.

I did return to him, several times.  After a warm reunion following my trip to Ireland, which had left me grateful for the comforts he offered, I left again to spend the summer back in LA with my family researching some business ideas.  My research was fruitless, however, my brother was far less available to me than I had hoped, and my Dad was still absorbed in grieving my mother’s sudden death less than two years before.  I felt invisible, in pain, and without direction, frightened by fantasies of cutting myself.  I returned to Drew and we flew down to South Africa together to visit his family.  On landing in Johannesburg, I was overcome by a visceral realization of how tense apartheid must have been, how much brutality was needed to control such a vast and oppressed majority.  Despite the kindness Drew’s family showed me, I was unsettled by their advice that I show my gratitude to the black servant who helped raise him just by giving her money.  And despite being greeted warmly as the only white patrons of a black night club, Drew’s family showed mistrust and veiled contempt towards the throngs of young, poor black men begging for jobs around town.

When we returned to Glasgow, I moved into his apartment, but things had shifted.  I saw how growing up with precarious privilege in a third world country had fueled Drew’s ambition to prove himself.  The boy who had ventured across lines was growing into a man committed to ruthlessly defending big business.  I began to feel like a trophy of American power, daughter of a NASA engineer, gaining my satisfaction from perfectly playing the role of housewife:  cooking his dinner, ironing his shirts, and giving him pleasure.  One evening I sliced my finger while preparing dinner alone and, watching the blood pour out, I panicked.  I had no phone and no idea where to get medical treatment.  I felt isolated and vulnerable, suffocated by someone who didn’t see me for who I really was and paralyzed by the effort of trying so hard to live a life that wasn’t mine. I would wake in the middle of the night with the most beautiful spiritual writings pouring from me, but I had no idea what to do with them or where else to go.  When 9-11 closed Heathrow for a week, I realized that there may come a time when I couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to.  It was now or never.

I left Drew holding me with open palm a third time, flew back to the west coast, and took a train up to Portland, OR to start a new life near an old college friend.  Drew visited me once the following spring for an awkward weekend of mixed messages – my enduring sense that he was wrong for me overcome by my guilt and loneliness.  He returned to Glasgow determined to find a job in the States so he could be with me, and, frightened by the idea of being trapped in endless ambivalence, I finally ended it for good.  Two years later he contacted me to say that he was leaving a two-year relationship to take a promotion in London, and that he had only just gotten over me.

I hope there are special guardian angels for those who wound and are wounded in deep places as they stumble over each other’s hearts trying to find their way.  Drew has become increasingly vivid to me over the past few weeks as I find myself remembering the wisdom of holding with open palm.  Some might say that Drew, and my husband too, were foolish to continue to hope when I was restless and ambivalent from the start.  And all of my best friends would say the same to me now – that those who are meant to share their lives will not send mixed messages, will not inspire feelings of jealousy and insecurity, will instead fill each other with an enhanced sense of calm and connection and purpose.  That is, indeed, how it would work if we were all healthy and whole.  But the journey toward healing is rocky and winding, full of fears that block our affection, full of anxieties that leave us hyper-vigilant and doubtful, and full of longings that veil and distort the essence of what we receive.

We heal through the cosmic generosity of receiving what we have given – for better and for worse.  I am now experiencing viscerally what Drew and a handful of others must have felt to let me go over and over, to long without fulfillment, to feel vulnerable beyond reason to something we do not see clearly.  It is said that the strongest drug for a human being is another human being.  This serves as a perfect battlefield for the ultimate human struggle: the mucky wrestling about of blind desire and selfless love for another’s well-being; of the stubborn search for fulfillment in a specific way and the willingness to appreciate the myriad tender ways we receive divine love all the time.  The epic is riveting because these forces are nearly equally matched.  Every moment represents a choice of direction, delicately balanced and maddeningly obscured.  If we understood how to navigate it, we would not have chosen this human life.

Practicing holding with open palm enables me to give others the same freedom I long for to explore and fail and simply be myself. It acknowledges my longing to receive a connection with spirit that is intimately human, while also surrendering to the reality that nothing that comes from outside us is certain or eternal.  What lands on my fingers can fly away at any time, but it is not the source of my security, my purpose, or even my love.  It is simply something mysteriously beautiful that visits us and stays only as long as its heart desires.  For nothing anyone says or does can make the natural love of the heart anything other than what it is.  Through this new test of patience and discernment, my palm is slowly opening in a vulnerable act of both giving and receiving, one moment after another, breathing deeply into the stillness, waiting for the truth to reveal itself, and reminding myself that I already am everything that I love.

Nancy