Every day is an open-ended book, little shrink; you turn a page and the next day is full of possibilities again. Every life is not. Some end it on a cliffhanger. Others conclude it peacefully after being faithful to the hero's journey. But the saddest ones are those filled with mere survival strategies, with very little thought given to actual, authentic living. Yes, I know, you are not here to listen to me philosophise but to get the real story since you did not believe the last one. We need to go back to a few months ago, when...
The house feels alien, somehow. The door makes its usual tinkling sound against the cow bell hanging from the curtain rod. It’s dark and I can barely make out the silhouettes of the two dogs, still tied up even though it is late and they should be off their leashes for the night. Clearly, no one has taken them for their night walk, even though it is now 11.30 in the night.
They are glad to see me, little shrink. Others may or may not be. One door remains ominously shut. Nothing new in that. But the atmosphere outside is heavier than the cut-with-a-knife version. Or is that what is inside my mind, that's what you are wondering, aren't you, young shrink? Of course, it is.
I drift back to the morning filled with raised voices, the in-clan clash of two indomitable wills, one lying dormant for a long time while the other has just learned to raise its rebellious head. Why is it, I often have to ask in another context, that the young and old find it difficult to communicate with each other? The generation gap, comes the answer, pat and swift. And what causes the generation gap, I ask to follow up on the first question. This gives some pause. Maybe, some say, it has something to do with different value systems. And why are the value systems so different, given that they often belong to the same family, I ask. Because the young like Western value systems and the old are traditional.
This is the moment for the inward laugh. What do you think about this? Oh, right, it doesn't matter what you think but what I do. Well, the explanation is facile and I am often facetious but, in this moment, it is a bitter laugh. What do values have to do with what appears, to both parties, to be self-focused behaviour? The raised voices throw erudite "theory-of-knowledge" concepts at each other. Perspectives, they rant, do exist. What the voices fail to achieve is perspective, though. Little shrink, tell me, now, why we can talk about perspectives but not achieve them? Yes, of course, it is the human condition.
Quietly, I take the dogs for their walk. They are the victims of uncaring humans but they do not deserve neglect. The barometer outdoors lifts tangibly and it is a drag to go back in. In this battle of wills no one will win, no one will lose. And no one will take prisoners either. The stakes, as they say, are too high.
One ante meridian. Sleep evades as voices roll over and over in my memory. The principle by which I am normally able to live is that one can only change one's own behaviour and attitudes. No one can change anyone else. What have I done that is wrong and what can I do to push this impasse into that realm in which conflict resolution is possible once more? No, it begs another, more fundamental question: what is the conflict all about?
I meander through the last nine years, the ones in which I found freedom, the ones in which I worked hard to be an effective social being, a single parent, a career woman, someone that others could lean on and seek comfort with. Most important on that list was finding freedom. A place in which I could be myself. One in which no one could dictate what I should do or not. Precious for someone who had never really had it. The first place to offer choices. And here the edifice, built up over the past nine years, seemed to be under threat. When the castle is threatened from the outside, one has the wherewithal to repel the attack. But when it comes from within?
Nine months later, the echoes of the raised voices haunts me, again. Nine months in which the child enwombed should have grown from foetus to newborn left nothing but a void after labour. Nothing achieved in the interim for, though the effort was great, the logistics failed. Faultlines were revealed where none were thought to exist. And the earthquake, when it came, broke the Richter. Much like a much-touted female mythical figure, the earth opens up and swallows me whole. What did I fight for but an ephemeral cause that dissolved with the mist at dawn? As Bach's Brandenburg played its first strains, the 6 a.m. alarm, the enveloping warmth morphed into the coldest chill leaving the world a colder place than it had earlier been.
There are fantasies, still. This time, however, they are self-focused. It is straightforward and fairly simple. So I hang up the wind chimes that have waited since the last mid-term break. I hang them up inside the room just so I can do something beyond feeling paralysed. I hang them up inside so that my favourite fantasy of putting them up in the balcony, casually toppling over, will stop plaguing me. I look out and down from my poised feet on the step ladder, down to eight floors below and think of how easy it would be to casually, gently, just fall to oblivion. There is no panic here. Just paralysis. A butterfly pinned under the glass barely able to look out at what the rest of the world can see. Perspectives. Little shrink, have you ever wondered what the butterfly feels when it is pinned, then put into a case for display? We think it is dead but is it really dead? Are those lifeless eyes that completely dead and is it really gone from the world of sentient beings? Perhaps that is a perspective worth exploring.
Ah, yes, your time for this week is over now. When you come back you may or may not find me here. Nothing much I can do here in a padded cell, though. If I had a spoon, I could dig my way out but where would I go and what would I do? Don't worry, little shrink, there isn't much I can do anyway, pinned down inside a padded cell.
***
The house feels alien, somehow. The door makes its usual tinkling sound against the cow bell hanging from the curtain rod. It’s dark and I can barely make out the silhouettes of the two dogs, still tied up even though it is late and they should be off their leashes for the night. Clearly, no one has taken them for their night walk, even though it is now 11.30 in the night.
They are glad to see me, little shrink. Others may or may not be. One door remains ominously shut. Nothing new in that. But the atmosphere outside is heavier than the cut-with-a-knife version. Or is that what is inside my mind, that's what you are wondering, aren't you, young shrink? Of course, it is.
I drift back to the morning filled with raised voices, the in-clan clash of two indomitable wills, one lying dormant for a long time while the other has just learned to raise its rebellious head. Why is it, I often have to ask in another context, that the young and old find it difficult to communicate with each other? The generation gap, comes the answer, pat and swift. And what causes the generation gap, I ask to follow up on the first question. This gives some pause. Maybe, some say, it has something to do with different value systems. And why are the value systems so different, given that they often belong to the same family, I ask. Because the young like Western value systems and the old are traditional.
This is the moment for the inward laugh. What do you think about this? Oh, right, it doesn't matter what you think but what I do. Well, the explanation is facile and I am often facetious but, in this moment, it is a bitter laugh. What do values have to do with what appears, to both parties, to be self-focused behaviour? The raised voices throw erudite "theory-of-knowledge" concepts at each other. Perspectives, they rant, do exist. What the voices fail to achieve is perspective, though. Little shrink, tell me, now, why we can talk about perspectives but not achieve them? Yes, of course, it is the human condition.
Quietly, I take the dogs for their walk. They are the victims of uncaring humans but they do not deserve neglect. The barometer outdoors lifts tangibly and it is a drag to go back in. In this battle of wills no one will win, no one will lose. And no one will take prisoners either. The stakes, as they say, are too high.
One ante meridian. Sleep evades as voices roll over and over in my memory. The principle by which I am normally able to live is that one can only change one's own behaviour and attitudes. No one can change anyone else. What have I done that is wrong and what can I do to push this impasse into that realm in which conflict resolution is possible once more? No, it begs another, more fundamental question: what is the conflict all about?
I meander through the last nine years, the ones in which I found freedom, the ones in which I worked hard to be an effective social being, a single parent, a career woman, someone that others could lean on and seek comfort with. Most important on that list was finding freedom. A place in which I could be myself. One in which no one could dictate what I should do or not. Precious for someone who had never really had it. The first place to offer choices. And here the edifice, built up over the past nine years, seemed to be under threat. When the castle is threatened from the outside, one has the wherewithal to repel the attack. But when it comes from within?
***
Nine months later, the echoes of the raised voices haunts me, again. Nine months in which the child enwombed should have grown from foetus to newborn left nothing but a void after labour. Nothing achieved in the interim for, though the effort was great, the logistics failed. Faultlines were revealed where none were thought to exist. And the earthquake, when it came, broke the Richter. Much like a much-touted female mythical figure, the earth opens up and swallows me whole. What did I fight for but an ephemeral cause that dissolved with the mist at dawn? As Bach's Brandenburg played its first strains, the 6 a.m. alarm, the enveloping warmth morphed into the coldest chill leaving the world a colder place than it had earlier been.
There are fantasies, still. This time, however, they are self-focused. It is straightforward and fairly simple. So I hang up the wind chimes that have waited since the last mid-term break. I hang them up inside the room just so I can do something beyond feeling paralysed. I hang them up inside so that my favourite fantasy of putting them up in the balcony, casually toppling over, will stop plaguing me. I look out and down from my poised feet on the step ladder, down to eight floors below and think of how easy it would be to casually, gently, just fall to oblivion. There is no panic here. Just paralysis. A butterfly pinned under the glass barely able to look out at what the rest of the world can see. Perspectives. Little shrink, have you ever wondered what the butterfly feels when it is pinned, then put into a case for display? We think it is dead but is it really dead? Are those lifeless eyes that completely dead and is it really gone from the world of sentient beings? Perhaps that is a perspective worth exploring.
Ah, yes, your time for this week is over now. When you come back you may or may not find me here. Nothing much I can do here in a padded cell, though. If I had a spoon, I could dig my way out but where would I go and what would I do? Don't worry, little shrink, there isn't much I can do anyway, pinned down inside a padded cell.
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