Category: Uncategorized

Blame & projection

“We like to take our anger out on those who are weaker, those who cannot answer. It is a human trait. And somehow the arguments to prove we are right appear out of nowhere.” [Solzhenitsyn; from the Gulag Archipelago]

I like the way Solzhenitsyn doesn’t disqualify himself from this human weakness. It is clear from his writing that he believes he is just as capable of doing the same things himself.

His observation here is true and sad, and something to be looked out for, paid attention to.

It is much easier to say, “You did this to me!”, than it is to say, “I feel very angry at you!”. It is much easier to say what we think to be true of others than to acknowledge our own experiences and feelings. It is much easier to project—saying, “You are a bitter and distasteful person”—than it is to say, “I feel bitterness and distaste inside of me when I’m close to you.”

It is much easier to say, “You are a hateful person!”, than it is to say, “If I’m honest, I feel hatred for you.”

It is much easier to make others out to be small than it is to acknowledge that we would quite like to step on them.

“Love After Love”

By Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The Art of Counseling

The poet David Whyte says, “Poetry is the art of overhearing yourself saying things that you didn’t know you knew.”

I love this, because it acknowledges that the tricky thing in life is to actually make contact with the truth, goodness, or beauty that we suspect is there, but to which we don’t quite have access.

In a similar vein, I might say that good counseling is “the art of helping people articulate things that they didn’t know they knew.” Mediocre counseling involves the counselor telling the client things that the counselor thinks the client should know. But good counseling creates a uniquely attentive space in which the client becomes able to speak words that have been waiting to be spoken.

I don’t have a lot of interest in telling people what to think. There are people who want to turn therapy offices into venues for indoctrination or moral re-education; I think this is a huge problem—and makes for very bad therapy. But I love how magical it can be when authentic dialogue and listening opens the door for someone to overhear themselves saying something that they didn’t know they knew.

Words from Mary Oliver

“…To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” –Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods.

“Nothing human is foreign to me.”

“I am a [hu]man; nothing human is foreign to me.”

These words have stuck with me for many years. The truth of these words is the reason why I can work with people who are dealing with issues that I haven’t personally dealt with, or really, why I can work with, talk to, or understand anybody who isn’t exactly like me.

If I ever slip into contempt for somebody, it’s a sure bet that I’ve lost touch with the reality that, given the right set of circumstances, I too might have made the same choices they did; or—maybe another way of saying the same thing—that I’ve lost touch with the part of myself that is capable of embodying the same spirit.

When I’m thinking rightly, I can see that there is something that I can make sense of even in a person’s craziness, even in the atrocities a person might commit. This is to say that I’m not fundamentally or inherently better than anyone.

I really believe that to be true. And I love the world of possibility that this opens to me: that no matter who walks through my door, there is a sure bet of finding something familiar there.

And, as an introvert, I’m not always particularly excited about anybody walking through my door; but it is a comfort to know that there is always a hint of something familiar in anybody who happens to be on the other side of it.

(By the way, the quote is from somebody named “Terence”. I don’t remember where I originally heard it. The words stuck with me more than any information about who “Terence” is. You know how that goes.)