Holding My Own
Portola Valley, CA 13 May 1999
Usually I “hold my own” against something, against an adversary. Someone can ask me how I am doing, and I’ll sometimes say, “Oh, I’m holding my own, I guess.” Very often this is accompanied by a well-rehearsed sigh. The meaning here is obvious. I’m treading water. I’m not losing ground, but I’m not gaining any either… cum see cum sah (or however the hell you spell it). Those dark forces out there, whatever they may be, have not defeated me yet. Although there is usually an implicit sense that they eventually will win out. It is only a matter of time.
What if I were to hold this phrase just by itself, not in opposition to anything or anyone? What does it mean to “hold my own”? What exactly is “my own”? How do I “hold” it? What shifts in my perception of myself would occur if I were to remove this imagined adversary, as I sit with the phrase and all its embedded implications without filtering it through the sieve of distorted interpretations.
Holding my own in this context begins to mean embracing what is truly mine, what is essential to who I am as a person. Rather than standing my own ground, it really is a matter of standing in my own ground. Of taking a position, not in opposition, but literally planting my feet in the ground and saying, This is where I belong. This is where my soul, my spirit, my whatever, is in touch with the material world. This is me as a concrete being, not as some abstract idea, or some ephemeral spirit being floating a few feet above the earth, fearing to touch down less it become somehow contaminated by the dirt and shit and mess and chaos that is the essential nature of matter.
“Holding” conjures up images of an embrace. I hold a child in my arms. I hold a lover as a sacred trust. I can’t grip them tight-fistedly and still call it holding. I may grip a child’s hand as we cross the street, but that is a matter of protecting the weak from the powerful onslaught of traffic. And I have gripped a lover’s hand, but that was usually just before she left, or just before I left, as a last desperate attempt to deny what was happening in the moment. As if by gripping tighter it would make it harder for one of us to release the grip. Of course, the opposite is true. A tight grip is the surest way to lose touch. No, holding has the quality of an embrace, a looseness of the reins, an allowance for movement and change, not unbridled, but not ratcheted down either.
Holding my own means embracing myself and all that I am with the same care and concern and urgent attention that I give to those I love. It is a way of really taking responsibility for my life. It means paying attention to the realities of the material world. It means letting go of the denial that I am not in this world, and of this world. That is not a choice, it is what is. The choice is how I will take action, how I will allow the passions that I hold to fuel the actions in my life. It means acknowledging that I care deeply about things. This kind of holding also means that I am willing to really accept gain in my life as readily as I am willing to accept loss.
This is yet another way to accept responsibility for sustaining joy in my life. I can choose to hold joy just as much as I do sorrow, abundance just as much as scarcity, possibility just as much as limitation, strength just as much as weakness, courage just as much as fear, resilience just as much as vulnerability, and fulfillment just as much as emptiness.
Holding my own is not some abstraction. It is an essential quality of a flourishing life, of a life taken seriously.