Handles
Portola Valley, CA 9 May 1999
The way we grasp something is how we integrate it into ourselves. It is how we make something real. And how we grasp something, or even how we fail to do so, is to a large extent a result of the handles we use for the task. When we hold onto a thought, a feeling, or even a mental image, there is some piece that we hold onto that allows us to take it in somehow. Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher in ancient Rome, said, “Everything has two handles: one by which it may be carried, the other by which it can’t.” That piece of startling wisdom is about two thousand years old. So much for New Age thinking.
If in fact everything does have two handles, it is important to be clear about which one I am trying to grasp. Thinking deeper on this two-handle notion I began to focus on the word handle. We say things like “I’ll handle it.” Or just as likely “I can’t handle it.” It isn’t just carrying something. It is more like having a particular kind of purchase on it, such that it won’t get away from us, even if we only have just a few fingers in the handle. It’s about grasping and holding on, rather than “standing under” and knowing with some sort of completion or totality. Sometimes perhaps losing our grip, but at least having a grip to lose.
There is, however, another, meaning to this word handle – one that can add significant light to this kind of knowing. Handle, in our culture is also a slang term that means a name. It is what someone is called by. So, naming becomes a central issue to handling. If we do not properly name situations, or feelings or thoughts that are occurring, we miss enormously important opportunities to handle them, to really grasp them and integrate them into our lives.
This same Stoic philosopher had something to say about this as well. He wrote about the importance of calling things by their right names. He wrote, “When we name things correctly, we comprehend them correctly, without adding information or judgments that aren’t there… Do not risk being beguiled by appearances and constructing theories and interpretations based on distortions through misnaming. Give your assent to only what is actually true.”
The word beguiled strikes me as right on the mark. There is a deceptive quality to interpreting what is going on even before taking the time to name it, sit with it, and allow whatever the “it” is to name itself. There is also an arrogant quality to that process. It is as if I am in control, that my interpretations -- no matter how premature -- will in the long run win out. They never do. Eventually the deception is revealed. It always is.
In time we come to the realization that we are trying to carry something with the handle by which it can’t be carried. It is then in the moment when we put it down, in the moment that feels so much like a humiliating defeat, in the moment when we say, “I can’t handle it”, it is only then that its true name is revealed. Then we can begin to carry it and take whatever it was that was so overwhelming and make it a part of ourselves.
The more I pay attention to handles of all kinds in my life, the more I see where my authentic power is. It isn’t in handling everything, but it is in allowing all that comes into my life to have its proper name. Handles are what we use to open doors, to cross thresholds. They are also what we use to create leverage, to move something that is otherwise beyond our capacities. Grasping events and circumstances in our lives as they really are allows us to develop a relationship with ourselves that is free from denial and self-deception. This frees us to see choices that seemed non-existent so long as we were intent on interpreting, rather than committed to knowing things by their true names -- by what is, and not by what isn’t.
Handles are wonderful allies; powerful reminders that calling things by their right names has a magical quality to it. Perhaps that is what is behind the old stories about wizards and witches whose special words could open doors and reveal hidden passageways. Maybe they are really stories about opening ourselves to the possibility that one day we could call ourselves by our true names, open doors unavailable to us, and know another level of intimacy in which we can first name ourselves correctly and then reveal that name to those we love.