No More Skyscrapers, Please

After 9/11, I remember people asking, “How are we going to rebuild the Twin Towers?” But within a month, it became clear: we weren’t. For one thing, skyscrapers are dangerous in this violent world. More importantly, you can’t deal with loss by replicating what is gone.

But we do this all the time. A relationship ends, and we start swiping before we’ve even changed the sheets. We lose a job and immediately start looking for another to make us feel important again. A dream dies, and before we’ve grieved, we’ve already found a new dream.

In my coaching practice, I focus on presence before intervention. I tell my clients: Not everything uncomfortable needs to be fixed right away. Not every absence needs to be filled. Sometimes we need to leave empty space around what’s gone, trusting that that’s where the fertility and creativity are. Live close to the ground, as Lao Tzu said.

Practice in the small things. When something leaves your life, try not to replace it right away. When someone cancels, don’t immediately text someone else. When a chair breaks, look at the empty corner of the room for a while before buying a new chair.

We tend to work on our lives as though we’re building an empire. But the empire, if it ever existed, is long gone.

I sometimes imagine someone living through the collapse of Rome, still thinking in terms of empire while their world has actually become much smaller. The roads still point toward the old capital. The maps still have the old names. But what’s real is simply this village, this patch of ground, these few people who still need each other.

No more skyscrapers, please. Perhaps your life right now is just that one friend, the book by your bed, the neighborhood you walk through each morning, the breath at your nostrils. And perhaps after something enormous falls, the task isn’t to build another enormous thing. It’s to discover what was there underneath all along.

As always, if you’d like to be held through your own process, reach out and we’ll set up a free coaching call.

Georgia O’Keeffe, "New York, Night" (1929)