Last week I ended the piece by being willing to discover what freedom is asking of me. However, freedom creates tension in that I don’t know what will happen next. It requires me to stay present in the moment and be willing and able to hold the tension. 

So often I’ve practiced premature closure as a form of tension resolution. Before even allowing myself to feel any tension, I settled for explanation rather than letting my process unfold. Or I found a quick solution rather than spending one more moment holding my tension. Either way, by not staying with what is happening, I’ve shortchanged myself and prematurely stopped a process that could have provided resolution in and of itself. 

I come back to the roles of protagonist and narrator in stories. The protagonist, in this case is my body. It is living and feeling the tension. The narrator is intellectually aware of the tension yet removed from the feeling of it. 

Again, I return to the issue of consent. My narrator is quite happy to give consent to the discomfort of tension. It’s not feeling any pain. However, my body has a very different experience of the tension. My muscles are tight and my jaw is clenched. My heart rate is starting to speed up. What support does my protagonist need in order to give her consent to be with the tension until something emerges? 

What I am beginning to see is that my narrator can become so enamored of the intellectual possibilities of the moment that it abandons my protagonist. There is so much to think about, so much to understand, so many connections to make. And while my narrator is off exploring those possibilities, my protagonist is still here, living the experience without any acknowledgment from the narrator. It wants partnership. It wants to know that the narrator is still with her.

Perhaps this is what acknowledgment really means. Not simply noticing what my body is feeling but turning toward it. Accompanying it. Not being seduced by the possibilities of my mind. Staying close enough to intuit what my body needs rather than leaving it alone while my mind figures out what it means. Being in partnership. 

Writing this now, I realize that premature closure might be what happens after my protagonist feels abandoned by my narrator. The relationship between the two is temporarily severed while the narrator leaves the protagonist to go solve the tension intellectually. 

Then, because the body is still carrying the unresolved tension, the narrator eventually comes back with an explanation or solution and says, essentially, “There. We’re done.” But WE are not done! In the temporary disconnection there is no “WE!”

In the absence of partnership, the tension becomes too great for the body to hold, and premature closure successfully lowers the level of anxiety. 

As many of you know, I love to play with words. At this moment, I’m thinking of resolve and resolution. In order to deepen my writing process, I have resolved to stay with what is coming up in the moment. That feels like a commitment, a stake that I can lean against when my tension mounts. Resolution, on the other hand feels like a completion, a satisfying end to a problem, a question, or a series of stimuli such as the end of a symphony. 

Stay also means refusing to abandon the relationship between narrator and protagonist. The protagonist can’t consent to sustained tension when it has been abandoned by its partner. 

Freedom may require creating and maintaining the relationship in which you can remain present to whatever happens next. 

Resolution in this case is a completion, an experience of fullness and partnership in the moment. This piece of the work is done but the work continues. And from this new wholeness creativity, joy, and surprise can emerge.

What happens for you when your narrator abandons your protagonist?

What allows them to reunite?