TENDER TERRITORY

I have been noticing in these last months the amount of tiredness many people are experiencing and the speed at which we can move to reactive and sometimes over exaggerated emotional responses to certain people or situations.

I have the privilege of being around others where reflecting on what’s going on and what we are learning is part of the makeup of our lives.  It is in these spaces that it is possible to take a step back and consider what is at play in our own circumstances and more widely in the bigger picture, what’s happening out there in the world and its potential impact on us and those we live and work with.

It was in one of these spaces that the term ‘tender territory’ appeared, as we recognised some of us were having our ‘buttons pushed’, getting defensive and oppositional or withdrawing. I was very awake to revisiting old wounds and past hurts. It felt at times that I was walking, not on eggshells, but in territory that was indeed sore, tender and exposed. Something of this was, and is, also showing up in the work we are doing with others, as coaches, as mentors and facilitators, with organisational clients bringing more ‘personal’ issues of this kind to the sessions than ever before. The essence of which seems to hold something quite different to what has gone before.

So what is going on?

We are now living in a world where there are so many factors that when put together, add up to a whole load of psychological, emotional and spiritual distress and heft. We are tired, heart torn and soul sore.

We may have the everyday pressures of living that have been there for ever - and our personal afflictions and challenges that make life more than enough to cope with - but, add to the stew the particular ingredients of 21st Century existence as we now experience it – global climate catastrophe and systems breakdown, increasing division and polarities of view, heightening awareness of racism, sexism, ableism, wars and random acts of violence, gross economic inequalities, meaningless work and crushing loneliness …. the list is endless. We are now exposed to more information - ‘true’ or otherwise - than our brains and psyches have ever encountered before. And then of course there is COVID, which perhaps is the Pandoras Box of this century.

No matter - if not yet personally impacted by these issues (and this is increasingly unlikely) - we turn away from this existential cart load of ‘issues’, turn down the volume or turn off our screens, close our doors or borders, it is still all there, hanging in the ether and our souls know it.

We can focus on the positive and there are as many good things and good people doing them out there as ever. But as much as we recognise this and as much as there are those, thank goodness, who are engaged with ‘single issue’ agendas and fighting for change, the cumulative impact of this ‘wholey’ mess on our lives as human beings cannot be underestimated.

It is in this ‘tender territory’ that we must learn anew to meet one another. To recognise and work with or through what is stimulated and evoked. To welcome what is in the shadow and bring it to the light. To bring our selves back to now, our breath and what we can foster in openhearted spaces between us, listening and understanding more of one another. In doing so, we may come to see that those sore and tender spots, when touched, offer a gateway to connection and our shared humanity and, just maybe, the potential for change.

Marion Ragaliauskas