Of Magnets and Memory Foam

People that once were a part of our lives cannot be replaced with other people. This seems like such an obvious statement, hardly an insight.  It's something we hear often and seem to agree with, mostly whole-heartedly.

However, let me say this in a different way. Our psyche has space for many different people, but every place in it can only be used once. It doesn't matter how often we try to fit a new person into the space of an old one, the experience will always be the same. What comes to mind is the feeling and experience of holding the two same ends of two magnets together. As long as we hold them together, i.e., force them together, they look like they belong together. But as soon as we let go of them, they "turn their heads away from each other" and push away from the other.  Have you sensed this? Can you, like I right now, almost feel how the magnets are straining against your hands?

So, when new people enter our lives, we have to figure out where they can actually fit into our psyche.
We also have to figure out what will happen to those places that were once taken but are no longer because we may have left former friends, relationships, some may have left us, died or just fallen out of touch.  What happens to those spaces? Obviously the people who once inhabited them are gone, no longer an active part of our lives. But, like I said before, they will never be empty spaces again the way they seemed to be in the beginning. Or where they even empty in the first place? Perhaps, if they were, those spaces, once inhabited, act like memory-foam. They shape according to the person who laid in them and will never lose that shape. So, when another person attempts to lie in them, they (and we) experience a marked sense of discomfort, because the space just doesn't seem to fit.

Of course, another but related question is whether those spaces were never really empty in the first place but already came molded in a certain way such that we're really only looking for the "right" people to lie in them.  Perhaps it's a little bit of both? Perhaps there is a general molding of those spaces (that is open to more others) that turn into a more detailed, more fine-tuned one (that is open only to the person who first laid in it.

As I am writing this I am beginning to realize that I'm recapitulating the famous words of Heraclitus--panta rei--everything flows . . . one cannot step into the same river twice. However there is one important difference: Heraclitus seems to have believed that there is no retention of previous steps into the river. (From the perspective of flowing water that only makes sense.) I'm saying, on the other hand, that there is a soul-retention of previous experiences. And so it makes sense that we experience sadness and possibly conflict when we try to repeat a previous experience because the new experience "rubs" against the old one. There is friction. In Heraclitus' view there is no trace left of the original impression.

The German song-writer Reinhard Mey in his song "Es war ein gutes Jahr" sings about a previous relationship:

"Als laeg ein Schnee auf meinen Sinnen, mit tiefen Fussstapfen von Dir." (As if a snow lay on my senses, with deep foot-prints of you).

So, the traces and footprints of others on our senses, on our souls, that is what we need to understand as we engage with, meet and love new people. We need to know, and honor, in ourselves and those we would like to be part of our lives, that those previously inhabited places exist. We need to describe them, circumscribe them, thus make them visible to ourselves and others, lest we try to fill them or others, inadvertently, step into them.

Doing this is hard work! I can see it in my personal life, as I am dissolving the forces that held together an old relationship and beginning to build structures for a new one. And I also see it daily in my counseling practice as couples are struggling with the same issue, adoptive parents and children are trying to figure out how they can live/exist with each other, new friendships are formed, etc.
And while it's already hard enough to do this because of the sheer energy that is consumed by such transitions, it's made even harder when we feel compelled to shroud the transition in secrecy. A secrecy especially with respect to the new friend, partner, child. For fear of hurting them, if we reveal to them that they are not what the former person was.  And, of course, as we embark on the adventure of a new person in our lives, we often yearn for that first, unencumbered, experience of falling in love, having a child, making a friend.

But what was that first experience? When was it? Who was it? Of course, we are inclined to say that it was with our parents, with mother who carried us and gave birth to us. But is it really? Or is that way of thinking about it merely a stop-gap measure to ensure we not fall into the abyss of an infinite regression, in search of our ultimate origin, the ultimate trace that itself is the original?

Can we say "yes" to the future without saying "no" to the past? Can we say "yes" to the future and say "thank you" to the past? My deep wish is that I can share this with my children, lover, friends and relatives: there are no either/or(s) in life...there only is "and."