BETWEEN STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS

I live according to my strength, not according to time.

Once, this phrase seemed perfectly clear to me. Until one day I asked myself: what is strength, really?

Strength relative to what?

Relative to weakness?

All right. Then what is weakness? And relative to what does it become weakness in the first place?

Is strength tension?

Perhaps. But not necessarily.

Is weakness relaxation?

Yes.

And no.

The longer you look at these two words, the less they seem like opposites.

Maybe the question is not really what Strength is and what Weakness is.

Maybe the question is:

what are they for?

And then, almost as if between thoughts, a simple hint appears:

Strength holds.
Weakness lets go.

And then something strange happens.

Weakness stops being the absence of strength.

Sometimes it takes far more strength to let go of something you have been holding for years than to keep holding it.

Holding on to a person.

Holding on to the past.

Holding on to an idea of yourself.

Holding on to a project, a goal, a belief, a pain, your own sense of being right.

Sometimes we call this strength simply because we have learned to endure tension for a long time.

But enduring tension for a long time is not necessarily strength.

Sometimes it is simply the inability to open your hand.

And this is where I begin to understand differently a thought that has lived in me for a long time:

Strength is the ability to relax at high speed.

Not to stop life.

Not to hide from it.

Not to retreat to a place where nothing happens.

But to remain inside the tremendous speed of events, responsibility, decisions, emotions — without becoming tension yourself.

To act without tightening inside.

To hold without clinging.

To let go without falling apart.

Perhaps this is where Strength and Weakness stop being opposites.

Strength says:

I can hold.

Weakness answers:

And I can let go.

Neither of them is complete on its own.

If all you do is hold, eventually you turn to stone.

If all you do is let go, nothing ever has the chance to take form.

Life seems to happen in some strange movement between the two.

The inhale holds form.

The exhale releases it.

The heart contracts.

The heart relaxes.

We gather ourselves.

And then allow ourselves to fall apart again.

And here an even more interesting question appears:

what gave birth to Strength itself and to Weakness itself?

Usually, we try to find the cause on one side or the other.

Strength gave birth to weakness.

Or weakness forced strength to arise.

But more and more, it seems to me that they were born from something third.

Not outside.

And not even inside.

But between.

The space in which both holding and letting go are possible.

That moment between an exhale and the next inhale, when you have not yet taken anything in, and are no longer holding anything at all.

Strangely, there is neither strength nor weakness there.

And yet both of them arise from that very place.

Perhaps that is why I feel so close to the state I call Ecstasy.

Not excitement.

Not exhilaration.

Not the peak of an experience.

But a state in which there is no longer any need to prove your own strength.

You may hold.

You may let go.

You may act.

You may stop.

You do not have to be strong.

And you are not afraid to be weak.

Because you are no longer standing on either side.

You are in the place from which both arise.

And perhaps true Strength is exactly this:

to feel the moment when you need to hold,
to feel the moment when you need to let go,
and not to confuse one with the other.

And perhaps living according to your strength does not mean calculating how much energy you have left.

Perhaps it means living with such attentiveness to yourself that you know:

what needs to be held now,

what is already time to release,

and where there is no need to do either.

Simply to be present.

While Life itself takes the next breath.