This picture is Florence Morel - whose relational network crumbled when her 16 year old child disappeared while out partying, and was later found murdered. OK, it's a movie, but the close-up images as she navigates the trauma illustrate how a carefully composed face easily hides the real life behind it. How do we get behind a face without threatening others? How do we allow others to see behind ours when we're scared of being vulnerable? We might encounter tears, painful stress-raising blood pressure, or a deep unshared excitement hovering just below the surface. If we could see behind the face we might avoid a lot of hurt and embarrassment. Instead we blunder on blindly ignorant how our words touch emotions while we ourselves get taken in by the miss-direction of others. We're complex creatures shaped by nurture and nature, living an intricate web of experiences. To know someone requires a deep investment in their lives. Yet daily we meet new people and leap to conclusions about their lives, happiness, and stability -- most often when there's an incentive to maintain a façade. Two prime examples are cocktail parties and visiting a church -- both are risky face-to-face encounters fuelled by assumption, decision, and deception. A cocktail party puts the individual the focal point with the intent to show that "everything is good with my life, see how wonderful I am". This carries the threat that our inadequacies may be exposed as we strategically flit from person to person with our smiles and trivial chatter (seasoned with carefully dose of self-promotion). And the only resources we have are our face, our wit, and our appearance. Church? Visiting a church is risky because, of necessity, this requires some self-exposure. By it's nature church should be the opposite of a cocktail party, but sadly it isn't. If anything, people become even more guarded (and they don't even have the benefit of alcohol to help lower their defences). Entering a church is an implicit statement of self-subjugation to a "higher power" (as people fearful of God like to call him). This threatens us with possible exposure as a "sinner", and so up go the barriers. If we're not careful we may find our lives being probed by strangers ("So where are you from, what do you do, are you a believer?") or facing the routine of a beaming welcoming team ("So lovely to see you. Would you like to fill out this information card? The membership forms are over there"). The normal response is to firm up defences, compose our faces, hide the weaknesses, and approach life as if it were a 24-hour cocktail party. That's rather depressing. Why can we not, as T.S. Eliot put it, accept that “It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are." (the full passage is at the end of this post)? As Oswald Sanders observes, "More failure comes from an excess of caution than from bold experiments with new ideas." The first step is surely to examine how much we've committed to composing our own mask of confidence, and as a result spent little effort on empathizing with what’s behind the faces of others. Take for example Brian Douglas, who is a pastor in the USA (and apparently votes Republican - how does a Christian vote republican - isn't that a vote against the poor?). Douglas observed that members of his congregation were supporting Donald Trump, and realized his ability to pastor these Trump supporters was limited by his inability to empathize. Similarly, Cassie Curtis, a writer, speaks of the pains of 'singleism' as she recounts how people so easily miss-categorize her - they miss-read what's behind her face. The second step is to consciously decide to step away from all the bullshit of social deceptions (watch the video below). The third step is to have compassion. The fourth step is to respond. And then the fifth step comes when I realize I'm not very good at doing any of this, acknowledge my inadequacy to sustain my efforts, and say to God, "OK, so I need some help here" (that's actually the real 1st step - isn't it always!). Excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s 1949 play, The Cocktail Party
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are. You will find that you survive humiliation And that’s an experience of incalculable value. That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost The desires for all that was most desirable, Before you are contented with what you can desire; Before you know what is left to be desired; And you go on wishing that you could desire What desire has left behind. But you cannot understand. How could you understand what it is to feel old? We die to each other daily. What we know of other people Is only our memory of the moments During which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same Is a useful and convenient social convention Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger. There was a door And I could not open it. I could not touch the handle. Why could I not walk out of my prison? What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone. Half the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle To think well of themselves. There are several symptoms Which must occur together, and to a marked degree, To qualify a patient for my sanitorium: And one of them is an honest mind. That is one of the causes of their suffering. To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence. I must tell you That I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me -- Because, if there isn’t, then there’s something wrong With the world itself — and that’s much more frightening! That would be terrible. So, I’d rather believe there’s something wrong with me, that could be put right. Everyone’s alone — or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I’m sure they don’t. Is that a delusion? Can we only love Something created in our own imaginations? Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable? Then one is alone, and if one is alone Then lover and beloved are equally unreal And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. I shall be left with the inconsolable memory Of the treasure I went into the forest to find And never found, and which was not there And is perhaps not anywhere? But if not anywhere Why do I feel guilty at not having found it? Disillusion can become itself an illusion If we rest in it. Two people who know they do not understand each other, Breeding children whom they do not understand And who will never understand them. There is another way, if you have the courage. The first I could describe in familiar terms Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it, Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us. The second is unknown, and so requires faith -- The kind of faith that issues from despair. The destination cannot be described; You will know very little until you get there; You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession Of what you have sought for in the wrong place. We must always take risks. That is our destiny. If we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned. Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning. All cases are unique, and very similar to others. Every moment is a fresh beginning.
1 Comment
r4space
22/6/2016 12:05:40 am
I'm not sure how realistic step2 is - how do just stop using the currency of the society you live in. If I just stopped using money I'd quickly either starve or become a hermit or both.
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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