My Father lost everything: his home, his store, almost his life, to the Nazis. After the war, he lost everything again trying to open another store in London. And finally in his later years, he lost everything again, bankrupting himself with an ill-fated travel agency. He would often raise a glass and toast, “Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow they will take it all away from you!” 
Another of his maxims was, “Never grab onto anything you can’t let go of.” On the other hand, my husband, Ron’s father, used to say, “Never grab onto anything you can’t hold on to.” Grasp and release. 

The black raspberries were early. I had popped one in my mouth and the burst of flavor was swoon worthy. Why not pick a few? Lust for berries led me from one bush to the other, precariously balancing on ledges and edges, reaching and grasping vines to stabilize myself. A bush beckoned on the side of the road. I knew the tangle of brush and poison ivy below hid a gully. I could straddle it and simply reach for those berries. Higher and higher, just one more berry…

And then it happened. The branch I had been grasping broke, sending me backwards into the poison ivy ditch. While this story has a happy ending – I came to standing without my hands touching the poison ivy thanks to my lying in a ditch senior citizen version of Moshe Feldenkrais’ Five Winds Kata, (here’s a more elegant version by my colleague Seth Dellinger). What is it about wanting to grasp more than necessary?  Grasp and RELEASE! 

Hold your hands in front of you, palms down. Your fingers hang down. As you turn them over, your fingers curl. This grasp reflex is embedded in our nervous system. We grasp from birth – from clutching Dad’s finger shortly after birth to our metaphoric grasping and holding on for dear life near the end. Grasp is embedded in our language – we grasp a concept, we grasp at straws. 

Flexion and extension of the hand is reflected in all our parts. As I fell, I curled into flexion, and when I recovered from my fall, I stretched out and exclaimed, “Thank God no one saw me!” To reach and to grasp involve the entire self. The trick is also to know when to let go. A poem by Bertolt Brecht says it all:

Early on I learned to leave everything quickly
The ground on which I walked
The air I was breathing
Lightly I do so, yet still I see
How others want to take to much with them

Leave your ship light
Leave lightly behind
Leave too your ship lightly behind
When you take the road inland

You cannot be happy if you keep too much with you
Nor if you want what too many people do not want
Be wise, do not try to have your own way
But learn to grasp things as you pass by. 

How do you reach? Where do you begin? How do you follow through?