Going Upstream
Imagine a village in the foothills of a major mountain range, a village where time has appeared to stand still, bisected by a river, always cool from the glacial melt, framed on each bank by snowfields in winter and bright, iridescent, buzzing meadows in summer. Life was carefree and easy in this village until a strange phenomenon arose. First, a lone body washed up on the edge of the pool right in the middle of the hamlet. The inhabitants were perplexed and shaken. This had never happened in living memory. The corpse, which could not be identified, was respectfully buried in accordance with the cultural mores and the villagers returned to their daily routines…
Alexithymia
A case was described whereby a struggling client — a very successful man by all the criteria of our society; self-made millionaire, respected in the community, handsome, fit & healthy, seemingly intact family life, vibrant social network, etc. — was having difficulties in his “empty nest” marriage because he felt that his wife was not displaying sufficient willingness to have sex with him whenever he (apparently often) wanted. “Oh boy! “, I thought, “this is not new to me.” Thinking back to my VIP (Very Important Patrick) days, when I was proud of the fact that my average working week surpassed sixty hours, when, as an executive in a multi-national corporation, I racked up many hundred thousand air miles, it was clear to me that I, too, had fallen prey to the “sacrifice indulge syndrome”…
Totality
In her book, Arendt notes that, by stoking tribal nationalism, any nation of people can be persuaded that it is surrounded by “a world of enemies”. This paranoid state then makes way for the ideology that states that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with and better than all others, thereby excluding the very possibility of a common family of humankind, a sisterhood and brotherhood of all humans, indeed of Creation as a divine whole. For such a ploy to succeed, the innate human sense of community (among peoples) and belonging (to the wider sphere of the natural world) needs to be smashed…
Protection
Thus begins the gradual crumbling of denial which many of us have maintained all our adult life until such an epiphany occurs. It may come through the questions posed by a therapist or something as mundane as an old photo found while cleaning up the drawers of a desk, or even the aroma of baking bread wafting from a stranger’s house in the neighbourhood. I have extended the scope of the question, for example in the following ways: When you were being constantly bullied at school, who protected you? Where was the protection when, as an eight-year-old , you were sexually molested by that priest who lived in the street opposite the school? In each case, the same answer: “Nobody”.
His Story
In his recently-published work, “The Wisdom of the Odyssey”, one of our leading cotemporary Homeric academics, Phil Cousineau, highlights the contrast between the outward journey towards war and victory at Troy, and the onerous disoriented, decade-long, return journey undertaken by Odysseus, to his wife, son and subjects, stating that: While the Iliad asks: “How should one face death and earn honour?”, the Odyssey asks: “How should one live after war and find one’s way home?”…
Living On Purpose
Imagine reaching the end of your life and realizing that the person you became was not the person you could have been. Not because you lacked talent, intelligence, or opportunities. Not because life was unfair, but rather because you had spent decades being driven by forces you could not see, chasing goals that were never truly yours in the first place, diligently sitting in the orchestra, following the baton of the conductor, playing a symphony you have never truly comprehended, playing a tune that is not your own. Many great teachers have pointed out the necessity of carving out our own unique path in life, not following a path that has already been trodden…
Awe
Because many of us rarely experience awe or do so only sporadically, we remain unaware of its beneficial effects on our state of heart and mind. When most of us have the experience of feeling down, for example, we usually look for distraction through busyness or light relief through comedy or entertainment. These are not only less effective than awe; they may, in fact, be counterproductive in that our stress levels are ultimately increased by the end of the day. Cultivating awe, on the other hand, can still the mind and trigger a great mental shift, propelling our neural activity beyond what had become its predictable comfort zone…
Boundaries
It is incredulous that we survived such experiences as children. The abuse was bad enough, but the icing on the cake was the fact that no one was there to turn to for solace, for protection, for understanding, for solidarity, for a comforting hug. I dared not bring it up with my parents for fear that a second round of punishment would ensue. This stance emanated from my observation of how my parents treated older siblings in similar circumstances. I was smarter than that, I surmised. Into that trap I would not fall. It is this “no one being there for us in our time of need” which is described by Gabor Maté as the “über wound”…
Vulnerability
It was all those jagged edges that bewildered and overwhelmed me, that had me on the run almost from the time that I had learned to walk. Now I can see that these were the product of the unexpressed grief, the denial, and the crazy making which characterized the family in which I grew up. There was no one there to hold me with my jagged edges, so I simply covered them over in the hope of avoiding further mutilation. When we hide things from others for long enough, they become hidden from us too. Yet beneath the armour, the wounds continue to ache. And then they begin to fester. Only when the pain becomes intolerable do we cry out for hope.
Relationships
Having grown up in circumstances in which we often felt unsafe or even threatened, we are always in a stance of defensiveness and high alert, parrying the balls that life hurls at us, non stop, in the cosmic pinball machine, never having or taking the time necessary to bring sufficient awareness to the situation, the awareness that would enable a creative, conscious response. We soon became exhausted and chose, as a survival strategy, to tune out of the insufferable pain we carried deep inside, in every tissue of our bodies. The irony is that we need to encounter, embrace, and transcend this pain if we are to get well. The prerequisite is that we relinquish the old habits of “zoning out”; be they by means of ingesting substances or engaging in addictive processes, or both…