Absence Makes the Heart Grow F________
Fonder? Furious? Feral? Fragile? Feeling into the F that Fits.
Friends, it’s truly a Big Blue Sky day here in my little corner of the world. One of those unbearably sublime May days where the azure backdrop is accented with a friendly little white puff here and feathery wisp there. Grass so deeply green and tender you can’t imagine it could ever grow stiff and brown under summer’s glare. Blossoms and blooms of every shade audaciously erupting, the air surrounding it all perfectly temperate and mildly perfumed, the birds super-styling with their syrinxes.
It’s almost too much poetry. Too much sensory abundance to fully ingest and digest. Don’t get me wrong, my soul is out in the grass cartwheeling, even as my heart feels a little achy-breaky over it. Both/and strikes again! And isn’t that just the way it seems to go with most things when we really feel into the totality of them? With life on the whole? It’s a real mixed bag, a potpourri, a stew of many flavors. So it is.
Hmmm. I suspect I could just drop the mic right now, call it a day. Good talk friends, good talk.
But I won’t, because spring has also revealed itself as the season of pondering unexamined adages, and I’m hankering to discuss. These are the kind of old-school adages ingrained so deeply in our cultural psyche that we probably first encountered them as zygotes happily backstroking through the amniotic fluid in which we gestated. The adages we’re so accustomed to that we don’t stop to think about whether they actually make sense, ring true, or serve us in any way.
There are roughly a bajillion of these we might look at, but we need to start somewhere. How about “Absence makes the heart grow fonder?” Yeah? You’re down with that one? Swell.
Now according to the 30 second survey I just conducted on Google, this adage is usually taken to mean something along the lines of “when someone I love goes away, I love them more.” It seems like a positive thing, no? A benign, appropriate little response to offer automatically to someone dealing with a newly empty nest, a mandatory separation, or even a cellphone they just ran through the washing machine. Kind of like an on-the-spot verbal greeting card, right?
But hang on a second, I have questions. What do we mean by “absence?” Physically absent? What about the times when your companion is physically present with you, say across the dinner table, but in their heart and mind they’re actually on a beach in Tahiti with an umbrella drink and a pair of earplugs? Doesn’t that also qualify as absence? Maybe an even more painful absence than if they actually were in Tahiti? But, that doesn’t seem right…how might that make one feel fonder?
And what about “fonder?” If someone I’m trying to relate to leaves, whether physically, mentally or emotionally, does that make me feel fonder toward them? Am I exhaling a great big sigh of heart-shaped relief when they get up and go? If so, I can’t help but wonder why I like that someone better when they’re not present. Or why I’m choosing to be in relationship with them at all. I’m thinking it could be an indication that I’m not allowing myself enough personal time, which is a healthy need for most folks I know, or that I need some time with other people I want to connect with but haven’t been. In other words, I may be suppressing needs that somehow only get met when that person isn’t around.
On the other hand, if “fonder” really means that I feel desperate and grasping when that person is gone - something beyond missing them, something in the realm of incomplete, anxious, insecure, immobilized even - then that seems a bit of a red flag, too. In these situations, maybe their absence reveals uncomfortable questions I harbor about my own value. Questions about whether I’m enough on my own or whether I’m enough to attract undivided presence. Or maybe it’s a question about whether I’m too much and send people scurrying away with my too-muchness. Ouch.
That actually raises interesting questions about my most important relationship, the one with myself. If I’m not present with myself because I’m in an addiction, consumed by people-pleasing, or some other kind of self-abandonment, do I feel fonder of myself? Not so much. I feel deeply distressed, which often leads me to try to get even further away from myself. And the further away I get from me, the less present I am with you.
According to the adage, that should be great news for everybody, right? Hmmm. I hear you, friends. Who’d have guessed this innocent old adage would harbor such a ball of snakes?
The good news is that if any of the questions I’ve tossed out today felt prickly, you have something to explore, should you choose. And if not, that’s okay too. Prickly questions are, in my experience, usually patient. They just hang around on the periphery until we’re ready to answer them. But if the time is ripe for you and you could use an exploration partner, click below. In the meantime, I bid you a fond adieu. Really.
Prickly questions are SO patient! I love that positive frame.
This is really funny timing, after what I wrote the other day hehe via leaving my partner for a couple weeks and indeed, my heart seemingly grew fonder! So I tried to be brave and take a deeper look at that! A prickly question, indeed!
I think on some level, it rings true? But only if we stay really loosey goosey on the actual meanings of the word “absence” and “fond.” I think for me, more accurately, it would be something like “Healthy Distance/space helps the heart remember (what it has)?!” As in, some time apart helps to stop taking the things we have for granted?
I think the word “absence” implies like, a deliberate non-presence? In which case, absence absolutely makes my heart grow anxious and clingy AF!
Can’t wait to see what other adages you’re untangling!