On taking things in

The importance of being porous

It started raining in London today and it felt like an exhale.

For a moment, anyway. Just after texting a friend to rejoice, I read a news article that said it’s the wrong type of rain—it’s too heavy for the dry earth to soak up, thereby contributing to flash floods. It went on to say soil needs to be porous to retain the water, oxygen, and nutrients.

And I thought, so do we.

We need to have enough void space to hold what nourishes us. As novelist Elizabeth Berg said:

“The act of continually taking things in should be as much a part of you as your hair colour."

Yet we’re often advised the opposite—to develop a thick skin, to toughen up, to impose boundaries. And sure, there are times we need a layer of protection from potential upset and harm. But I think there are also times we need to peel things back. To borrow an analogy from the poet Mark Nepo, sometimes it can be like choosing to wear gloves and then complaining nothing feels quite real—all the while forgetting we chose to put them …