In response to “this week Tan asks: What does a sigh signify to you?”

"You are late again," she said. "But I was doing something really important," he whimpered, knowing this is the third time he is late this week. "I don't know what to say anymore," she sighed.

The little kid touched the side table. The delicate vase, like a tall building caught in a storm, leaned left, then right, and settled in its place. Everyone in the room sighed in relief.

The act is the same in both cases - a sigh. Sighing, as universal and common as smiling, is an ambiguous gesture. Its meaning cannot be determined by the act itself. The act overflows itself in time. This simple and ordinary gesture's meaning is only understood in a context, only through what precedes it. The sigh opens up to something in the world, be it a thing or another person.

To sigh, to release breath, already calls the fact that one was holding breath. The sigh, often understood as a release, is a movement between holding and releasing. In the first situation, what is held is not only breath. The man was held to an expectation and to a standard of conduct by the woman. The holding of the breath was her disappointed awaiting. The sigh releases their relation from this expectation in a negative sense. The sigh is the expression of a man who cannot stay true to his word, a man who fails for the third time this week. The prior two failures are retained in the sigh, kept in her expanded lungs and bothered body. The breath in one's lungs is more than air - not only mute matter but matter which speaks with a sense.

In the second case, what is held is anticipation. In the future of the unsettled vase lies the possibility of falling and breaking. The viewers anticipate the falling of the vase. As the vase settles back to equilibrium, the witnesses are released from the possibility of seeing this delicate vase break.  

In other words, a sigh is much more than a sigh. Funny enough, we rarely notice our own sighing. It is such an ordinary gesture of our bodies that it conceals itself from our notice. Yet, unlike ordinary breathing which bears a neutral sense of being alive, the sigh always has a sense, a direction, towards disappointment or relief. It follows an anticipated resolution to a situation and releases the person from this anticipation. As the settled vase is the end of a particular anticipation, the woman's sigh also puts an end to anticipation, the anticipation of a genuine apology from the man. She gives up hope and moves on, or perhaps closes the situation briefly since he is likely to be late once again in the near future.

A sigh is also a movement between private and common. Air in my lungs, in a sense, is mine. It is contained within the borders of my body. I do not possess the air but I hold the air in me. Sighing releases, what was momentarily mine, back to the common space of air and sky. Breathing achieves the same but a sigh is interpersonally "loaded."

I do not really sigh as often in my room. Sighing is an interpersonal expression. We tend to sigh, without even noticing, in spaces where others are present. The sigh is a signal of frustration, being overwhelmed, and feeling stuck. We have no words to express our situation, how we are overwhelmed, and our bodies release a subtle sigh towards the space between us and others with the hopes of letting them know. It makes our frustration vaguely known to others. My private frustration overflows me and invites others to a shared conversation.

Very few sighs are preceded by reflection or thinking. And those sighs usually have a definite goal of which we are aware. My mother used to sigh with disappointment, I bet knowingly, to bring me to an awareness of her disappointment. More often than not, however, sighing is unreflective. It is our bodies trying to speak without words, telling us and others something is off.

So, next time you sigh, take notice because your body speaks even when you are lost for words.

D - 25/3/2022