“Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness – an empathy – was necessary if the attention was to matter.” Mary Oliver, (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet), reflecting on her 40-year relationship with Molly Malone, her partner for over 40 years.
The Secret Life of Words
In the COVID 19 world, the longer we are away from the dance floor, the further afield I reach for my writing inspiration. Today it is a movie, (tomorrow hugging a tree?). Follow along. I think you will find the review fascinating and insightful – and comment if you like.
The Secret Life of Words
The Secret Life of Words is a powerful 2005 movie starring Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins and produced by Isabel Coixet.
Tim is a burn victim. Sarah is his nurse. Both have physical limitations. Tim is temporarily blind due to damage to his cornea and requires daily, excruciating treatment for his wounds. Sarah is legally deaf and frequently turns off her hearing aid to keep the outside world from invading her self-imposed seclusion.
However, it is their emotional wounds that are most debilitating. A romantic interest intensifies over the course of treatment but shameful and painful secrets inhibit them from being vulnerable with each other.
On the last day of Tim’s care, with the prospect that they will soon go their separate ways, they both dare to risk vulnerability. Tim shares the secret is that he was having an affair with his best friend’s wife. When a fire erupted at the work-site, his friend threw himself in as a suicide. Tim tried to rescue him and was burned in the process.
Sarah’s pain is residual from the Bosnian war in which she was tortured, disfigured, and brutally raped by the soldiers. She witnessed even more horrific acts, including her sister bleeding to death from the random pointless slashes carved on her body.
In her final act of unveiling, Sarah unbuttons her blouse and guides Tim’s hand to her bare chest. In his sightless world, Tim has been consumed by romantic fantasies about his caregiver. However, as he traces his fingers over the welted scars on her chest, the experience is anything but erotic. Sarah’s gaze is riveted to Tim’s pained expression as each laceration opens his heart more. The anticipated romantic engagement unexpectedly devolves into a tear-drenched embrace as two lonely, damaged people find healing in the arms of the other.
The Secret Life of Touch
There is a ”secret life” that lives beneath words that the mouth cannot speak: only the body can reveal. This is how we are wired as humans: five senses, all revealing something distinctive and deep.
Of all of our senses, touch is perhaps the most intimate. The presence of the other is so close and immediate that our awareness is internalized at both a physical and emotional level. Touch is not merely skin deep. It has the potential to probe to the depth of the soul. We can allow another to explore our sensitivities and vulnerabilities and in turn learn the contours of their inner world, simply from a soft caress or holding a hand.
But this is only true ( or at least safe), if we are listening through an open heart. True understanding requires an attentiveness that is wed with emotion – to paraphrase Mary Oliver (above). To open at a heart level, both Tim and Sarah had to expose themselves and risk touch, skin to bare skin. Tim learned vulnerability and sensitivity through Sarah’s gentle provision of wound care. Sarah allowed Tim to explore her woundedness by delicately tracing the Braille carved on her chest.
This learning is true about all information cleaned from our senses. Our brain is wired to instantly integrate all sensory stimuli into accessible data. However, how we interpret or ascribe meaning to this data is governed by our emotional orientation. There is no “face value,” no objective reality about someone or some situation that can readily be universally appreciated. Knowledge of another is entirely subjective. We can only understand and appreciate another when we approach as subject to subject, up close, personal, in reverence, vulnerability, and trust.
Tango Tips
Tango is a dance of touch, of close embrace, of cheek to cheek, chest to chest. Yes, we know how to step, how to interpret the music, but do we know how to listen to our partner? Are we open to engaging another at a heart level?
Close contract presents the opportunity to enter our partner’s personal space and invites us to be sensitive to their responsiveness, receptivity, and warmth. But only if we listen with an open, empathetic heart.