I want to talk to you about tenderness and why it matters. But first, I need to tell you about my friend, Grace.
I met Grace the spring before we started college, at an event hosted by our now alma mater. At the time, I was an uncertain and anxious human, and it felt nearly impossible to put myself out there in a large group of my peers. I’m not sure how Grace felt at the time, but she exuded confidence and warmth as she walked right up to me, introduced herself, and decided to be my friend. It felt a bit reminiscent of an affable five-year-old going up to the shy kid on the playground and saying, “We’re friends now.”
Within half an hour of knowing each other, while chatting on a park bench, we learned that we both planned on studying abroad in Italy during our sophomore year. That day, we committed to being roommates abroad. It’s a risky move, agreeing to live in a foreign country with someone you just met, and to this day I consider it one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Almost a year and a half later, we navigated the streets of Rome together (without cell phones, mind you) and forever solidified our friendship. Perhaps someday I’ll tell you the story about the time we almost got trampled to death by a horse and carriage, or the time we got lost and used the wrong obelisk to orient ourselves and find our way home. But for now, I must focus on the task at hand.
Grace and I have cultivated and tended to our friendship for almost 16 years now. We have loved and supported each other through the highs and lows that come with living full lives. Together, we’ve navigated college, heartbreak, new relationships, long distance, difficult jobs, longer distance, dream jobs, marriage, grad school, the pandemic, deaths of loved ones, scary medical events, a climate disaster, coming out and leaving religion (on my end), and having children (on her end). Grace is my favorite person to tell both my good news and bad news to, because she really does double the joy and halve the sorrow. We are co-captains of an incredible ship.
I am not the best long-distance communicator (and honestly, I’m not the best short-distance communicator either), which is tragic because all of the people I love the most, including Grace, live very far away from me. Over years of trial and error, Grace and I have managed to come up with a system that helps us keep in touch regularly. This takes the form of weekly FaceTime dates, which are affectionately marked in my calendar as “GraceTime.”
Most Thursday nights, I tuck myself into bed, call Grace on my laptop, and we talk for either twenty minutes or two and a half hours about anything and everything. In our conversations, we share both the inconsequential and significant details of our lives, and we talk about the universe and our place in it. We listen, ask questions, provide insight, encourage one another, and take turns being hopeful enough for the both of us. Sometimes, one or both of us cries. Every time, we make each other laugh. Even on the heaviest of days, I leave these calls feeling lighter. I also usually leave these calls feeling fortified to continue doing good work in my small corner of the world.
There have been a lot of heavy days lately, and Grace and I have both been working overtime to not be completely swallowed up by despair. The other night, we were discussing the many forms of violence that are occurring in the world right now, and how witnessing and experiencing that violence can so often lead to demoralization. It was during this conversation that Grace brought up the Pale Blue Dot. I had seen the photo before, but had sort of forgotten about it, so I looked it up.
NASA, JPL-Caltech, “Pale Blue Dot,” February 14, 1990.
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth that was taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 in February of 1990. In the original photo, Earth appears as the teensiest tiniest little speck in a band of light that is surrounded by the vastness of space. Unless you know to look for the dot, it’s easy to miss. An updated version of the photo was published in 2020 (what a year, am I right?). It provides a slightly clearer image of Earth, but it still conveys how miniscule our world is in the grand scheme of things.
As I looked at the photo, I mused for the millionth time on how unbelievably tiny we are, how such an infinitesimal dot can contain so much pain and so much beauty, and how absurd it is that we exist at all. Grace responded, “When you see that that’s all that we are and have and can know, how do we do anything other than reach for each other? The only thing of significance we could possibly do is be good to each other.”
And that is Grace in a nutshell. She is caring, and thoughtful, and she has so much love for and belief in humanity. She looks at the atrocities of the world and she asks, “How can we reach for each other?” What could be more tender than that? I think part of the reason we became friends and have stayed friends is because of our tender hearts, our sensitivity to all of the things, our ability to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and our commitment to still making meaning out of it. Nothing matters, but to Grace and me, everything does. And even though we live on a speck of dust, we believe it is imperative that we do our best to be kind, gentle, and caring. Especially when the world is aching.
I have thought about the pale blue dot every single day since our conversation. A few days after we talked, I did a bit more research, as I do. I came across a passage written by Carl Sagan, an astronomer and scientist, and also the man who suggested Voyager 1 take the photo in the first place. In his book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, he wrote:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known (Sagan, 1994, pp. 6-7).”
Grace’s sentiments and our conversation mirrored Sagan’s views, and it all feels just as relevant over 30 years later. In a world that is full of unending violence and brutality, we are all we have, so how could we not reach for each other? What could possess us to look away, or convince ourselves that we don’t owe anybody anything, or actively participate in the dehumanization of other people? Who benefits from our indifference, from our callousness, from the belief that we have to be cruel because the world is cruel? Who benefits from our obedience to power? I believe that most of us do not actually want a world in which lethal force, displacement, genocide, starvation, drought, exploitation, and various other atrocities are the reality. I’d like to think that most of us want each other to be fed, housed, educated, healthy, and loved.
So many of us dream of a better world, and I think tenderness is a vital component of such a place. Tenderness generates safety and connection. It roots us in our humanity. And it helps us experience love and belonging. Who doesn’t want that? Feeling safe and loved and a sense of belonging is something that shows up in the work that I do with clients every single day. I would argue that tenderness is a basic human need. It is both balm and nourishment. I am able to get up in the morning and work toward a better world because of the tenderness I receive from people like Grace. Tenderness from loved ones and strangers alike kept me afloat during the height of the pandemic, it healed me after experiencing harm at the hands of men who wanted to possess and use me, it carried me through Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. Tenderness has kept me alive in my lowest moments, and has made me feel more alive during times of abundance. Tenderness makes life feel worth living, and it invigorates me to do my part in cultivating another world.
I don’t think that tenderness is the only answer, but it is a necessary ingredient that often gets overlooked. It alone will not stop cops from murdering people, or ICE agents from kidnapping children and separating families, or the government from decimating Gaza with bombs signed by politicians. It won’t single-handedly eradicate sexual violence or civil war or climate catastrophe. But it will allow us to remember our own and each other’s humanity. It will provide the respite and softness needed to tend to our wounds. It will energize us to keep getting up each morning and creating the world we desire in real time. It will make our time on this earth sweeter and more meaningful.
Grace and I sometimes joke that she’s going to drag me into heaven kicking and screaming. She fervently believes in a loving God and a heaven that has space for everyone. I don’t believe in God anymore, and when I finally allowed myself to stop agonizing over eternity, I let go of heaven too. I’m not sure which of us, if either, is correct. Regardless of what happens when we die, the thing I know for certain is this: we are tiny specks on a tiny dust mote floating through space. That is all we are and all we have and all we can know. And I want to spend the time I have here reaching for each other. I want to double the joy and halve the sorrow of the people I love. I want to make sure the kids get home safe. I want folks to have a soft place to land. I want people to know that they matter, that they deserve gentleness, that we can’t possibly hate and beat ourselves or anyone else into healing. I implore you to spend time thinking about the universe and your place in it, find your people, and to practice tenderness at any opportunity you get. We keep each other safe and warm.
I will leave you with a few questions:
How do you define or understand tenderness? What does it mean to reach for each other?
Who are your role models for tenderness?
How can you cultivate a relationship with tenderness, and practice being tender toward yourself and others?
What current patterns or behaviors could you replace with more tender acts?
How can you work on allowing yourself to be the recipient of tenderness?
References:
NASA. (1990). Pale Blue Dot [Photograph]. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00452
Sagan, C. (1994). Pale blue dot: A vision of the human future in space. Random House.