Laughing out life

Tears spoke through her sighs and isolated key terms, portals to layers of fine-grained content of consciousness. ‘Okay’, ‘hmm’, ‘well’. Another sigh. Okay, she said, I know I am sad, but I am going to suppress it, okay?

We both laughed. While she was giving words to her internal processing, we were both intrinsic part and witnesses of a familiar emotional process which rhythm and laws were by now not so foreign anymore. And still, it was challenging, it was what we might call ‘emotional work’. The only way out is through, as they say.

She leaned towards me and pressed her face into my chest area. Some shame, I imagined. And a search for a place to rest, to nest, to sit with the emotions and birth them amid warmth and spaciousness. And so, I breathed. Up and down, embodying the experienced highs and lows. This physical-emotional amplitude is not always a given; I get entangled in her emotions easily - automatically. But 'all one must do’ is to be with the process, to be the process. There is more to ‘not-do’ than do, actually. Ironically, this not-doing is emotional work.

So, here we were, two human beings immersed in active emotional work. Breathing, feeling, breathing, a word here and there, feeling. The ebb and flow of emotions sketched the contours of our bodies slowly becoming one channel for all too long constrained expression.

Yes. There it was. Release. Tears, laughter, some holding back, humor, self-recognition, deep sighs, and another hug. Alive and feeling y’all!

And now the mind and its engine called wonder enthusiastically came in to amplify the insightful process with creative perspectives. We discussed how this release of experiences of dread and emptiness was actually a deepening of self-recognition. Contrary to certain though constructions, the threatening emptiness was actually a doorway into the here and now, into existential expansion and unforeseen ways of being her idiosyncratic, everchanging self.

We were silent for a while and then briefly and sharply noticed how sensitivity is a subtle and grotesque shapeshifter, a beautiful, deep source for countless concrete forms of intelligence.

Shall we go outside, listen to the birds? Yes, we did. Sinking into this natural wholeness, joy entered our emotionally co-created landscape. Our laughter was coming from a liberated existential source, nowhere to pinpoint and everywhere at once. Hello life!