There may be an overwhelming desire for physical contact which can result in holding hands or in a close embrace. There may be an urgent need to talk about death or God or the soul. There may be a desire to walk around or to lie down. In one instance a client expressed the desire to be naked and removed clothing without hesitation or shame. Always there is a sense of well-being, of it being good to be alive and this in spite of the fact that the problems or difficulties which confront the client remain apparently unchanged and as intractable as ever.
Life is good and life is impossible.
Long live life. Perhaps by now my original statement is beginning to have more meaning. When tenderness is present there is the possibility of finding wholeness and of recognising the liberating paradox. It appears increasingly to me that when I can be tender or when I experience tenderness in another, neither I nor they can any longer be satisfied with a fragmented existence. We no longer wish to be mere facets of ourselves and as a result we find the courage to cross the bridges into new areas which had previously been hidden or feared.