Connection

 July 2019

Last year Kathleen, a friend I knew over 30 years ago, emailed me out of the blue and we started conversing. I wondered why she wanted to talk with me, given we’d parted ways such a long time ago. I kept asking her if she was well, but she was evasive and never responded to that question. I noticed over time that her messages were getting shorter and shorter and her words increasingly precise, and I felt more strongly that something was going on healthwise. She wanted to talk about theology, which 30 years ago I was very interested in, but now not particularly. I tried, somewhat lacklusterly, but really I didn’t have sufficient time to shape my ideas, given that my work is now psychotherapeutic. She began sharing her published theological writings where her ideas were practically inscribed in stone and she really wasn’t open to other considerations. What had been once a much more fluid mind, had become quite conservative. Last month, Kathleen’s daughter told me she’d died. I was not surprised. Her frailty was there in her syntax.

     I emailed David, a friend from years ago who I knew had been in contact with Kathleen to tell him of her death. They were both in their mid-80s, and quite a bit older than me. He then asked if I would like the missives he’d been sending her. I, being polite and a bit curious, said yes. Big mistake. The thrice daily missives were pure paranoia: on the hoards of foreign invasion, on the Chinese spying in our bedrooms, on the evils of this and that, etc etc. No mention of the health of the earth or other things that interest me, so I requested he send no more articles. There really are other things to think about, or not, and to enjoy.

     I got to wondering why David and Kathleen had felt it necessary to send me material at all. Did they fear I needed saving, was this some kind of end of life mission to set me on the “right” path, or something else.  

     My own parents were not disposed to convert me to anything at the last pip. My mother, in her 90s, was not inclined to lead me to the “right” way; she herself had lost interest even in the things that motivated her in previous years: meditation, yoga, and the wisdom of the East. Her concerns were immediate, in the delight of birds, dew on brightly coloured leaves, sunshine and clouds, oh, and iced coffee. My father, who died one month short of 101, in his way, had become a sweet lovely old man who’d left his politics of ethics and strict architectural laws behind. All he wanted to do in his extreme old age was have Walt Whitman poems (Leaves of Grass) read to him and to listen to sublime music.

     A dear friend and colleague is currently grappling with the effects of chemotherapy on a cancer he is treating and we both have decided that what matters to each of us is exquisite music and the transparency of the heart in connection with others and the lively earth. Connection is the thing that makes meaning and gives sense to life itself. It’s certainly the thing that drives me in my psychotherapeutic work, and life in general.

    A Reconnection is why my elderly friends reached out to me. It wasn’t to convert me to anything; they sought to connect with me. Without connection there is loneliness and depression, an implosion of emptiness, and the elderly, among others, too often lack enough real connection. Some people  become polite and circumspect, so as not to disturb the elderly, forgetting that realness is what connection is all about. I’m not sure I was particularly accommodating in reaching out to Kathleen. I did try, but I got caught up with the content of her writing and not enough for the fundament of connection. I think at least now I understand how to connect with David. Not through his missives, but just in listening to his drive towards reconnection.

Walking in the sandals of another

June 2019

     Today I received a beautiful foot massage with sandalwood oil and, in my usual meander of mullings, I got to thinking about the words sandal and wood and how they evoked in me a vision of walking through the woods in brown leather sandals, and then from that vision an idea for this article on how it feels to walk in the shoes of another. I’ve chosen to write of these shoes as sandals, because there is a certain innocent simplicity in the wearing of the latter and I quite like that.

     I have been lucky to have had a few mentors in my life who have shared with me their skills, insights, and knowledge in a lovely generosity of spirit.  They have, effectively laid down a path  in their walking, which is a very Buddhist idea. In this way, they  have also shown me how to be a human being and to mentor others without fanfare. For these things I am profoundly grateful.

     But taking the image further, from making a pathway for me to walk safely following them, to  inviting me to wear their shoes, well that takes a lot more risk on their part.

     One of my mentors, a university teacher of mine, nurtured my interest in the subject of Jungian psychology beyond the call of duty and, when I was in third year of my first degree, he asked me to be a tutor for second year students just while he was on leave. That was a big thing for me. Here the pathway was not just cleared for me, but I had to wear his metaphorical shoes. It was scary for the 21 year old me, but I made the shoes my own and really haven’t looked back.

     Some shoes, some expectations, seem impossible to put on and if they are squeezed into, feel intolerable. Such shoes do not, cannot, fit. If a parent or a teacher or someone with authority expects us to walk their way without compromise, and without any recognition that we are not designed for that level of engagement, then we can have years of guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy. This scenario is quite common in our society. The macho father demanding his sensitive son work in his cut-throat world of commerce or the soldier wanting his child to be a fellow warrier, the intellectual mother demanding her physically talented daughter, skilled in carpentry, become a fellow academic, the mathematically gifted teacher demanding a favourite pupil give up dancing for accountancy, and so on. Extreme mismatches make for great misery. Some people who have felt forced into occupations and lifestyles suffer enormously with depression and suicidal thoughts. They’ve internalized the expectations of others and turned against themselves, causing inner collapse. It is part of my work as a psychotherapist to ease off the ill-fitting shoes of mismatched expectations and provide support and encouragement as the client finds their own comfortable shoes to walk in. Comfort (from the Latin, to strengthen greatly), after all, doesn’t mean giving in to laziness, but to finding one’s own inner strength and feeling good in the world.

     The shoes we want to wear need to fit us and to make the journey through life relatively comfortable. A good mentor knows this and chooses his or her apprentice according to their leaning towards the lessons the mentor wants to pass on.

     Sometimes the shoes are sandals and like the sandals worn by the person wandering through the woods, there is an easefulness of being. Just as the essential oil of sandalwood calms, balances, grounds, clears the mind, so the wearing of the footwear bestowed by the mentor needs to be calming, balancing, grounding and clearing. The wearer of this footwear treads lightly but purposefully. It is clear the walker knows where she/he is going.