It's complicated being a person. Learning how to relate to a friend, an intimate, a therapist or a patient requires huge investment and, to my way of thinking, needs to move through and not around either party's need for privacy or aloofness ... their need to distance .... But that's true for all those of us who believe that unwellness of the Soul/Psyche has to do with unwellness in relationship. I have long thought that this is true of us human-folk as a result of many and many years of his man development. Those of us who didn't find value in being close wondered off from our Mothers, ages ago, and were lunch for Lions and Bears. Those who stayed near and their children and children's children survived.
Many have said that if you save a Single Soul, it is as if you saved a World.
Some (at least me) will say: Learn to openly relate to a single Other person and you've created a World.
I recall once saying that in a talk I gave and a psychologist interested in the relationship between the therapy he did and the Laws of Quantum Physics began explaining that to me. I couldn't muster up any more than a wish to be close to him ... the detachment of his theory was for me too much of a wall to really getting to know him, even in that moment and just a bit. For me, the core of health is in mutuality and our vehicle for that is exploration ... not seeking the end but learning to revel in the joys (and sometimes the pain) of being together in a certain space and time without the need to cover up. Explanation cuts off exploration. After the explorer arrives, he may seek to become the Plantation owner and forget about the uncharted Seas that brought him or her there.
While I need to return to my office, tomorrow, my only really young Grandchild is arriving, today, with my eldest. She's at what I call the Early Inock-Knock Phase.
Knock-Knock!
Who's There?
Salami!
Salami who?
Salami's going to the beach, today!
Followed by enormous laughter.
What my Little C wants, I claim, is to have the listener join her in that moment ... laughing even if her knock-knock shtick doesn't quite get that in at least slightly older folk the laughing follows a shared play on words. The pleasure for the older ones is in the arrival at the same time and place of that little witticism. Little C is ok just with the wish ... if her listener joins in. If the listener has a Canadian Pool Cue (they're 3" longer -- at least for playing Snooker on those long Canadian greens) where it doesn't belong and refuses to laugh, poor Little C can't laugh.
I think this may be implicated in all human interaction ... tete-a-tete or online. People indulge a variety of ways of attempting "to meet" others. Ain't easy. One method used by adults who have visited me has been, in their lives, promiscuity or compulsive sex .... to my way of thinking, this represents a way of connecting with a known choreography or choreographies ... even the Kama Sutra has a small finite number of dance steps that may be tried. Again, of course for me, trying to too-completely understand another's behavior is like that ... a dance with a known choreography that precludes the need to go through the usual slow process of "getting to know you."
Lots of things can get in the way. M and I, for instance, are at the "Waddya-say" phase of communication. Slow processing and beginning hearing loss in the Fourth Quarter has folk waddya-saying a lot. Danger is that either folk will tire of asking "come, again" or even get into angry exchanges: "Y'just phuk'n don't have any interest in what I'm sayin'".
Ain't easy to "Keep on truckin" in the Last Quarter .... or any other.
"Keep on truckin', Mama ... Truckin' them Blues away."
Many have said that if you save a Single Soul, it is as if you saved a World.
Some (at least me) will say: Learn to openly relate to a single Other person and you've created a World.
I recall once saying that in a talk I gave and a psychologist interested in the relationship between the therapy he did and the Laws of Quantum Physics began explaining that to me. I couldn't muster up any more than a wish to be close to him ... the detachment of his theory was for me too much of a wall to really getting to know him, even in that moment and just a bit. For me, the core of health is in mutuality and our vehicle for that is exploration ... not seeking the end but learning to revel in the joys (and sometimes the pain) of being together in a certain space and time without the need to cover up. Explanation cuts off exploration. After the explorer arrives, he may seek to become the Plantation owner and forget about the uncharted Seas that brought him or her there.
While I need to return to my office, tomorrow, my only really young Grandchild is arriving, today, with my eldest. She's at what I call the Early Inock-Knock Phase.
What my Little C wants, I claim, is to have the listener join her in that moment ... laughing even if her knock-knock shtick doesn't quite get that in at least slightly older folk the laughing follows a shared play on words. The pleasure for the older ones is in the arrival at the same time and place of that little witticism. Little C is ok just with the wish ... if her listener joins in. If the listener has a Canadian Pool Cue (they're 3" longer -- at least for playing Snooker on those long Canadian greens) where it doesn't belong and refuses to laugh, poor Little C can't laugh.
I think this may be implicated in all human interaction ... tete-a-tete or online. People indulge a variety of ways of attempting "to meet" others. Ain't easy. One method used by adults who have visited me has been, in their lives, promiscuity or compulsive sex .... to my way of thinking, this represents a way of connecting with a known choreography or choreographies ... even the Kama Sutra has a small finite number of dance steps that may be tried. Again, of course for me, trying to too-completely understand another's behavior is like that ... a dance with a known choreography that precludes the need to go through the usual slow process of "getting to know you."