Quote for Intentional Living – 1/29/11

 

Quote for Intentional Living

 

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”                                                           

  Buddha

It Yet Remains To See

Both clients came to treatment feeling very sad over a recent loss.

Within hours of each other I listened to two distinct and compelling stories. It was as if both clients had fallen into a hole.

 

One  had lost someone he loved.  Not through unexpected tragedy or unresolvable conflicts between them, but because he himself chose not to choose her.  It was a simple yet complicated story that involved promises made to someone else.  Promises, he said, were important to him, and so he had let a dream fall apart.

The second client had lost an opportunity for a new job that she had trained for over the past couple of years.   One day things seemed good; on track for success.  The next, they definitely were  not.  Her hopes and dreams fell into a hole, along with her confidence.  She’d had step away, and then take her bearings and find the strength to begin anew. 

Both clients seemed infinitely sad, and spoke of feeling broken in a place no one could see.  Both missed, and mourned everything that had seemed so possible.  And now both had come to therapy because they needed believe they could endure the next thing that would shatter their dreams.  “What was that?” I asked each in turn.  “What else was there?” 

First he, and then, in her own session, she surprised me; each saying that they weren’t sure what might happen next.   There was nothing specific that either of them could name.  It was just that they thought there probably would be something, sometime, somehow.  They both were simply waiting, and anticipating the coming of more, and deeper sadness.

Therapy revealed, and began to resolve his quiet despair and resignation, as well as her desperation and hopelessness .  He began to plan again, and to make an effort to improve things for himself and others.  She began to re-discover her self-confidence.   Yet both clients never really lost the tinge of sadness and the soft expectation of future additions to the well of tears that, one or two at a time, sometimes fell from their eyes.  After months of conversations, the sessions became easier for him.  We talked more of future than of past and he laughed from time to time… though not with his eyes.  She was able to open up to friends, but could not yet enjoy their playful chatter.   Both would need much more time to shed the pain.

And even now, though it is a long time since their sessions ended, when I think of either of them, I also think of this poem by Emily Dickinson:

Parting

My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

His therapy lasted a couple of years, her’s a little longer.  We worked through sad insights as well as hopeful realizations.  Eventually both clients were able to rekindle a love of the many wonderful surprises life can bring, and re-build a resilience to endure the not so wonderful surprises we all, from time-to-time, must face as we live through our own “partings.”

Quotes for Intentional Living – 1/22/11

Quote for Intentional Living

If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

Quotes for Intentional Living – 1/15/11

Quote for Intentional Living

“Think for a minute about what makes you fabulous and how you can celebrate it.”

Laura Mercier

Quote for Intentional Living 1/08/11

Quote for Intentional Living

Passion is universal humanity.  Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless. 

~Honoré de Balzac