The Promise of Intimacy
Intimacy. Is there any more misunderstood word in the English language? Any word that promises so much, yet seems so challenged to deliver the smallest amount? Any greater desire on the part of the average human being?
When I wrote last week that I was going to bring out intimacy as the self healing area for this week, such an obvious choice on one level and yet so dreaded on another that it has taken me almost six months to approach it, I knew I was opening a can of worms. And yet the time has come. One can only stall for so long, and then the moment of truth always arrives.
In the comments for my Human Scale post last Friday, Richard Reeve of CCSeed brought up the idea of looking people in the eye, something so uncommon in street life that I had almost forgotten to miss it! When I was growing up it was so common to greet everyone I passed on the street, and certainly to be greeted by everyone that I didn’t acknowledge first, with a hand wave, or a smile and a head nod, or a salutation of some sort: a “hello”, or “how’s it going?” or a “what’s up?”.
Over the years this has diminished to the point that it almost seems a violation to burst into someone’s private bubble; to say hello to someone on the street is to interrupt their phone call, distract them from their iPod, their private thought. So privacy and intimacy, once bed partners to be sure, now seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Pornographers vs. Marketers
Of course, this is almost inevitable in a society such as ours in which we are continually bombarded with attention grabbers, advertisements and quasi-pornographic images, on billboards, buses, store windows, telephone poles, in which we are induced to buy that which cannot be bought: love, contact, connection.
At this point it has even become hard to speak of intimacy without seeming to imply sex, yet when I think of intimacy and its centrality in our lives, the first image that comes to mind is that of a newborn baby laying on it’s mother’s belly, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, with hardly a true notion of where one ends and the other begins.
This seamless contact between mother and newborn is emblematic for me of intimacy in its most true and intense form, and the next image that comes to mind is equally simple, yet perhaps surprising. It is the image of a hand, wet and sudsy, holding a half submerged coffee cup, and another hand holding a sponge, washing the cup.
For some reason this simple image of washing dishes by hand, the very simple and aware contact of that, brings to me a feeling of deep intimacy, of deep contact and mindfulness. And a lost art, almost. So I’m not sure who to blame the most for the dearth of true intimacy in our daily lives, the Marketing Pornographers, of the Appliance Makers!
Oh well. Since blame and a buck fifty will buy you a decent cup of coffee, I’ll set that aside and look at a few simple ways to bring some human scaled intimacy back into our lives, with the aim of deepening our connection with the here and now, which is the true home of intimacy, of increasing our mindfulness, and of bringing us into a more holistic state of health and well being.
Another List of Things to Do
- One thing at a time.
- Slowly, slowly.
- Use your hands.
- Quiet time together.
- Extra Credit!
First Things First
The first thing is to take some time doing just one thing at a time. I could rail against the computers for this one, as never before have we had such an opportunity to do so many things at the same time, to divide ourselves up into such a fractionated existence, so that I don’t know if it is even possible to sit down at a computer and remain in any sort of intimate state (compare and contrast word processing vs sitting down with pen and paper, even better quill and ink!).
And yet we are focusing on what to do here, so regardless of whether you are washing the dishes, driving your car, eating breakfast, or talking to someone on the phone, getting down to the simple one thing at a time will help to bring on the mindfulness and human scale that is so necessary for a sense of intimacy in life.
Take it Easy
The second thing is to slow down. Whatever it is that you are doing. Speed and intimacy are pretty much antithetical, I think, and unbounded time is necessary to really get into a deep connection with what you are doing, and who you are being, at any given moment.
Of course, a bit of simple math reveals that this is going to require a lot of pruning on that list of things to do. If you are only doing one thing at a time and you are taking twice as long to do it, that’s easily a factor of 2×2=4, and quite possibly 3×3=9! Yikes! That’s a lot less shit happening! Of course, when we ponder what happens when shit happens, thats bound to be a good thing.
Do It Yourself
The third thing is to try to do things by hand which you have relinquished to some automatic processing machine (even the human ones!). Like washing the coffee cup by hand, the feel of warm sudsy-ness, of sponge and cup, each hand feeling something different, involved in different sensations, and the hand! The hand being the greatest instrument of intimacy in our arsenal!
Or actually making that coffee or tea or favorite hot beverage for yourself (or yourself and a friend!). Pouring the water into the kettle, putting the kettle on to boil, grinding the beans yourself for each cup, rather than buying your coffee pre-ground. Smell that freshly ground bean! And then pouring the hot water onto the freshly ground coffee and watching the process, the swirls the colors the bubbles. Smelling the instant transformation of dry coffee to wet grounds, of wet grounds to coffee.
If you count the number of times in a day that you stand in line waiting to give someone money so that they can have your experience for you, trading time and money (which is pre-traded time) for experience, it is not wonder our lives have been drained of the real juice, the real intimacy.
Another great thing to rescue from the machines is written communication. When we write a letter we actually get to include so many of the elements of intimate experience, the touch, the smell, the sound of paper, pen and ink, the formation of complex figures by hand, the closest that most of us ever get to drawing, that we are bound to bring all of these elements into the communication itself. And something that used to be commonplace is now experienced a few times a year at most, at birthdays and holidays.
I could go on and on, for the opportunities to regain intimacy in our daily lives are all around us. There is virtually nothing we do that isn’t an opportunity for deep contact and connection. And my last suggestion is the one that will perhaps be followed the least, for it is a bit of a challenge.
Alone Together
Suggestion number 4 is to take a few minutes each day to sit quietly with someone, a friend, a family member, a lover; just to sit quietly and be present with each other. No tea, no snacks, no television, no music. Just you and another person being present with each other. And just noticing and being present with anything that comes up.
Extra credit is to look into each others eyes. Smiling is permissible.
Extra extra credit is to do this every day for the next week. With one person or with many. One at a time though, please! It’s just the simple silent being-ness that creates the sense of contact and connection, of simple pure intimacy.
Whether you follow one of these suggestions or many, the sense of intimacy in your life is sure to increase, leading to a greater sense of, you guessed it, health and well-being, and all the things that go with that, happiness, creativity, energy…
And please share your experiences as well as your own thoughts about intimacy and how to bring more of it into daily life. Pax!
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