The Exorbitant Cost of Withholding

“When we feel inadequate and unworthy, we hoard things. We are so afraid—afraid of losing, afraid of feeling even more poverty-stricken than we do already.” Pema Chodron, “When Things Fall Apart”

I can’t remember the circumstances, but the line comes from a comic routine that I would have seen years ago. The dialog goes like this: “Are you happy?” The reply: “I’m happy, but I’m not H-a-p-p-y.” Or maybe it was a sitcom. I do remember clearly from the show “Rhoda” when she and her husband Joe were breaking up. The scene was classic. They were in group therapy for couples, and the assignment during the session was for the participants to pair up and form a circle inside a circle. Each person was to stand with his or her back to the partner and to simply fall back, of course, trusting that the partner would be there for the catch. Simple, isn’t it? Of course, but Rhoda couldn’t do it. She didn’t trust Joe. In a humorous comment in a separate individual couple session, she quipped to the therapist, “Between the two of us, we’ve had a headache for the last six months”. All of this for play—capturing the reality of people in relationships—capturing the reality that relationships fail all the time for all kinds of reasons. Mostly they fail because we cannot stop hoarding. We can’t embrace gratitude and tenderness—notions essential to Buddhist principles, but more generally, essential to whatever life-giving spirituality one embraces.

Most of us need the affection and companionship of another special human being—a particular someone who adds dimension and quality to our lives. Put in more palpable terms, we want someone who rings our chime, floats our boat. Why, then is it so hard? Why are the statistics on successful relationships—both those with benefit of vows taken before witness and those where vows are exchanged privately, perhaps not even articulated as such—so sadly disappointing? The divorce rate in America is around 41% for first marriages, escalating to 73% by the third trip to the altar. Childless marriages are much more prone to fail. Other relationships? Talk to your friends, look around your own family. The reality is kind of scary. I wonder what the statistics are for people whose relationships are not complicated by legalities, or by dependents.

Any man who wants to be in a relationship is in one. At least, that’s what a friend’s therapist told her. I have no idea what this means, really. What too many of us see too often is the backside of someone running the other direction—even though he, or she, might not being going anywhere, not right now, not just yet. Maybe a more accurate observation is that any man who wants to be in a relationship and who is capable of living healthily for himself, as well as with and for another person, is in a relationship.

The literature is full of analyses and explanations concerning how we are drawn to one another physically and romantically. The dollars mount up in the billions that are being made by writers, therapists, and the so-called gurus of the circuit. Self help books on familial and romantic love and on the love of friend abound. Honestly, though, we don’t need another book, talk show or circuit guru to explain our dilemma. It hasn’t changed. We are crippled by our inability to love selflessly, our faltering compassion, our anger, and our unforgiving pride. Poverty of heart too often defines the way we relate to one another. We long to be in control, but of what?

Give until it helps, some would advise. Others just as quickly would add, but save some for yourself. It is at those times that we feel impoverished that we cling to ourselves. We sense that we have nothing to give, even though we live in abundance. We respond to our fears with complaints, blame, and selfishness. We are unable to thrive in the present because habit draws us to a past that wasn’t really like we recall it anyway and to a future that we can’t possibly imagine. Our pride exacts a mighty cost.

In the words of the prayer attributed to the 13th century saint, Francis of Assisi:
“O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned…”

For some of us there is never enough to make us feel safe. No amount of love, money, earthly possessions, time or space brings us the peace that we long for. Unaware, we already have it—if only we can open ourselves to it. Yet, we want something or someone different that will make things better and make us more complete. Make me an instrument of change.

The Exorbitant Cost of Withholding—Santa Fe, New Mexico (August 14, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis