The reach is the tell

This week I've been watching my own hands. The reach for the phone the second a meeting ends, the pour at six, the noise the moment a room goes quiet. Not the habits themselves, but what they're covering. Every reach, I've started to notice, is pointed at something. Usually the one thing I already Know and would rather not.

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, in “You can't hear yourself over this.” The line I keep coming back to is that the reach is never really about the gummy or the scroll. It's about the volume. We turn the static up so we don't have to hear the signal running underneath it, the quiet Knowing that's been there the whole time. What I didn't say plainly then is the part I can't unsee now: the reach isn't the failure. It's the map. Whatever you're working hardest not to hear tends to be the truest thing you Know.

I know that terrain from the inside. I spent years in the closet, working harder than I understood to not hear the truest thing about myself. It waits.

We're quick to pathologize the reach. We name the addiction and set about fixing it, as if the reaching were the whole problem. But turning down the reach without listening to what's under it only quiets the messenger.

So here's one thing to try this week. The next time you feel the reach coming, the hand moving before you've decided anything, stay still for one breath and don't fix it. Don't scold the reach either. Just notice what it's pointed at, what you'd have to hear if the noise didn't arrive on cue. Noticing is the whole practice. The signal only needs a gap in the noise wide enough to come through.

You don't reach because something's wrong with you. You reach because something in you is still worth hearing.

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