Tai Chi Chuan – “Invest in Loss,” really?

Tai Chi Chuan – “Invest in Loss,” really?

The question arose recently: Does the adage to “invest in loss” in tai chi push hands have any relationship to a personal loss in real life?

At first I didn’t think so.

From the dictionary:

Invest: To spend or devote for future advantage or benefit; To devote morally or psychologically, as to a purpose; commit; To endow with authority or power.

Loss: The condition of being deprived or bereaved of something or someone; The harm or suffering caused by losing or being lost.

In push hands, you volunteer to learn a skill where trying to win – at least initially – will inhibit your progress. In a very real way, if you are attacked by your partner, you need to accept the attack and NOT fight her off. You let it happen. During this process, you may have mind left over to see what is going on, even if you don’t have a good solution. You will feel more and relax more. Eventually, perhaps through your own growth, or through the suggestion of your partner, you begin to see the solutions. One way to get there is simply getting pushed and pushed and pushed. This can be very frustrating!

Like any loss, it is very confusing. But it is also very rewarding because by “investing in loss” you will see the situation from a very different perspective. Otherwise, you are investing in struggle, resistance and strategy. By removing the desire to win, you open up your ability to see exactly what is really happening in this moment. It is virtually impossible to see what is happening in this moment if you are always strategizing or resisting what is actually happening NOW.

In real life, you don’t seek out loss in order to learn. Loss comes hard and sometimes there is no real obvious gain. The process of loss is just loss. Redemption is not always on the playing field. Unlike push hands, loss=gain is not true. Mostly loss=loss.

But not always. It is true that if you spend lots of energy on fighting the loss (as in push hands,) you have two problems: The loss + the pointless struggle of fighting it off. You’ve added baggage to a difficult situation. Letting go of that baggage is an important step to learning whatever lesson the loss may give you.

[Please note to those who have not participated in push hands: when you struggle against someone who understands push hands, generally, you lose the game! Struggle works against you.]

Clearly there are losses in life that create life altering changes in individuals and, to sound corny, they turn lemons into lemonade. This does happen. One is forced to do something else because something has been taken away. To persist in fighting the loss itself may close the door to what could be an alternative, possibly better, way to exist.

For some losses, to look closely at the loss often reveals steps that you did not take but in retrospect could have taken. You missed the opportunity to act when you needed to or to take necessary steps at the right time. You may learn something here and grow as a result.

But again, this is not always the case. I ponder those individuals in the World Trade Towers on September 11th, 2001, an unforeseeable disaster. Some were hopelessly trapped. Some had the option to run out of the building as fast as they could. Others decided there was no real danger and stayed where they were, perhaps avoiding panicked crowds going down stairwells in the dark. They couldn’t have predicted the tragic outcome.

“Invest in loss” has a sense of non-resistance to it. Giving up struggle, gain, winning. One side benefit of this is “being.” And allowing whatever is happening to happen. There is much to gain by doing this.

But what is “being” in the face of personal loss, grief, injustice perhaps?

Acceptance is one element. Awareness is another. Opening new possibilities is yet another. Allowing yourself the feelings that you need to feel as you experience the loss is one more. Giving yourself space to “not do” something in order to fully comprehend the situation, to fully be with it. Giving yourself time to simply exist with the totality of the loss. To embrace who you are – totally – in this moment. The knowledge that you are MORE than your loss.

While all of that is rarely pleasant, to NOT have that creates more tension and pointless struggle. To NOT have this binds you in.

It is interesting that in the push hands situation, a situation that you have volunteered to work with, many of the same problems and frustrations come up as if life had handed you some REAL loss. Experientially, it’s not so different. Inevitably you hit a wall of sorts and can’t seem to handle the partner in front of you. The desire to win often creates the very problem that creates frustration and a sense of loss. I have been so angry and frustrated at times with push hands partners that I have left the game. Others have felt the same about me.

Some real life losses create severe stress. While it may be easier to accept loss in push hands, the process of push hands takes time, attention, persistence, acceptance of who you are and your level of skill, and a great deal of letting go, of not reacting with your emotions. By this I don’t mean that you don’t have or recognize emotions. I mean that you don’t act on them as if they are some sort of trustworthy actionable directive. “I feel therefore I do” is not the adage. I hit you because I feel angry? Sorry no no! I feel my anger. I feel like hitting you. But I don’t. “I feel therefore I am.” (For some, if they don’t recognize their own emotional impulses, the action bursts forth as if by its own unrecognized volition. See Law and Order!)

Does personal loss require any less?

But more to the point, what if the loss had nothing to do with your actions or inactions? What if you were born with a loss? Or someone has decided you are inferior because of ignorance, fear, whatever the reason. Or cholera is in the water and it is the middle ages and no one has heard of cholera? Life happens despite our best efforts. It is loaded with losses, small and large. It is normal.

A book comes to mind, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. He presents the concentration camps and the suffering and loss experienced by the Jews. He was there. The bottom line for him is that loss tests our humanity. To weather a severe and real loss with dignity or even generosity is a personal victory worth struggling for. That is a profound and existential challenge.

No one wishes such harm on anyone, but when faced with ultimate loss, how do you rise to the occasion?

As you lose again and again and again in push-hands, how do you rise to the occasion?

The stakes in push hands are not the same, but the human struggle is similar to real life loss. You have to face yourself.

“Invest in loss” has answers to dealing with personal loss. Sometimes the best way to live is to allow the loss to happen (if you have no control over it) and see what comes next. Equanimity. Walk through the mud, don’t wallow in it. Or wallow in it for a while, and then get on with task of living.

By accepting loss, what can you make of loss? What does life have to offer, despite the loss, or even because of the loss? To me, this is “invest in loss.”