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Dear Dr. O'Donaghue, I knew you once....how are you?
Sandra O'Donaghue
email: odonags@ccf.org
We are all free to the degree that we allow it.The chains that bind us and hold us among the shadows of the cave were created in our childhoods.We were fettered when we came to accept false beliefs about ourselves,our values and the nature of reality in general.We accept these beliefs,often unconsciously because as children we will do whatever it takes to be loved,accepted,noticed or in darker instances,to survive.Unfortunately,what helped us through our childhoods is an enormous and detrimental weight in adulthood.We carry those chains without understanding how they now serve to block us in the pursuit of our highest goals.However,we can gain an understanding of where we first accepted these false beliefs and why we accepted them.In understanding this we may release ourselves from those chains and make our way out of the cave to a true freedom.For all other freedom is nothing,if the soul is not free.
I enjoyed the "adventure posting." I do question the idea that adventure cannot include a tragic ending or that tragedy negates adventure. The dying adventurer will [or may] gain insight and growth into his situation even though it may be too late or inopportune to benefit from the discovery. Although I have survived so far, I have fallen out of many trees. On the way down, I usually recognized my error in a flash and turn to concentrate on the landing, if not preoccupied by the thrash of branches on the way down.
So, short of being blind-sided by an unforeseeable and abupt accident, the success of an adventure depends upon preparation and momentary resourcefulness, a mental preparedness to take quick action. Personal growth, learning or insight gained from a tragic event would depend upon the duration between the onset of the tragic event and one's conclusion (death) and upon ones conscious mindfulness during that duration. Personal growth can occur in a moment.
Then also, consider the growth of those who listen to the tragic story of the adventurer. Tragedy is often an energizing punctuation on an adventure that can transfer the adventure and its discoveries to the next adventurer.
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i agree.
there is redundancy in the old saying "live in the moment".
we feel free paradoxically when we release our feelings about our relative places in time. when we dwell on our past self (i know i could have chosen differently) or on our future self (i will try to create this or that outcome), we are bound to a self that does not exist. when we act with good intention, and flow into outcome, there is the sensation of freedom.
I'd like us all to think about containment and boundaries in this work. What does this mean for us, if it isn't directly related to the therapeutic context?
When I first read about the subject, "What is adventure and where does it take you", I immediately thought about an insightful passage from the book "Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer" by Sena Jeter Nasland.
Nasland has the ability to find the internal similarities between what might appear to be two very different external events. Nasland lets the reader explore both the internal processes and the external reality of the two separate and seemingly unrelated events. She provides the reader with a window into the multi faceted lives of both male and female through her use of similarity and contrast.
The story is set in the mid 1800's during in the New England States. Many of the men were sent to the unpredictable, adventurous sea for the whaling industry. The women stayed at home and tended to the chores of homemaking and child rearing.
Una, the main character, is pondering aspects of life in this passage.
"I thought of the miles and miles of thread that her thimble thimble had pulled through cloth. What song had the needle sung to the fibers of the fabric? When she quilted, the needle passed through three layers: the pieced top, the inner batting, and the sturdy muslin underlayer. If all the thread from all her quilts were measured, would it stretch a thousand miles? Had her needle trudged, as a man's foot might trudge, over a journey of thousand miles?
She sat still, I thought, and yet she traveled. And when one stitches the mind travels, not the way men do, with ax and oxen throught the wilderness, but surely our traveling counted too, as motion. And I thought of the patience of the stitches. Writing a book, I thought, which men often do, but women only rarely, has the posture of sewing. One hand leads, and the other hand helps. And books, like quilts, are made, one word at a time, one stitch at a time." end of quote
Later in the story, Una continues to validate women's journeys and adventures but finds a longing within herself to go outside for her adventure. She speaks about this longing in the next passage:
"Uncle had already already had his life on the sea. For my aunt and my mother, journeying lay in their fingers for the most part. They knew the landscap of colored patches, the rivulets and the tributaries of stichery. They knew the voyage of reading. It seemed an inward journey. But the sea! the sea! How could it not seem freer, wider, more uncharted than anything else one could know?" end of quote
Ann McNeal
The absurd, the funny & the silly
While watching Weekend, it occurred to me that not all absurdism works. There was a moment or two in the movie when I began to feel, "Oh no, now this is just getting silly." But the movie never devolved into pure silliness, so I think it was good absurdism. But what's good about good absurdism? Lazslo noted that Weekend shared in some ways the sense of humor found in Monty Python stuff, yet Monty Python is funny (many think that anyway, and I wouldn't say Monty Python is sadly "silly" in the sense above) and Weekend is not really funny - it's seriously absurd. I think one value of absurdity is that it awakens your mind from the normal, it loosens you up, which can actually be relaxing. That is, if you let it. We demand coherent stories from movies, and may be more overwhelmed by the "pointlessness" of an absurd film. Another thing the absurdism does in Weekend: in frustrating our demand for a story, the filmic qualities come to the fore, and isn't that when a film is being its own particular art? Like Greenaway said (paraphrasing, but not much), if you want a story, read a book. I'm not completely convinced by Greenaway's attitude in this statement, but I think there's something to it. - Drew
Any interest, if these showings get really big or you want them to, to have them at Twiropa in the VIP room? Just a thunk.
I feel like I'm free in self-identification, yes, being (in principle) able to identify however I like. But then I feel like the first thing I want to do with that freedom is root myself. I mentioned in the discussion how the city & culture of New Orleans is a soil I desire to root myself in, even though I'm not from here.
As for having some automatic roots deriving from my ethnic (or familial?) heritage: My last name is Chastain and one thing we Chastains identify with is being cynical or at least sarcastic. I'm actually proud of this sort of quality, believe it or not, and I like being a part of an interesting group of individuals who share this trait among other traits. But I stop short of wanting to say: "Welp, there you go, I'm a Chastain - sarcastic as always. I guess I'm just a Chastain when you get down to it." Why the reluctance to say this? Because it would lead me to suppress my real potential (as a conscious human being) to be other than sarcastic. It also doesn't seem like the deepest explanation for my behavior to say: "I am sarcastic because I am a Chastain." It seems there are more profound explanations of human psychology than those which simply refer to my familial or ethnic origins. "Chastains are sarcastic, therefore Drew is sarcastic." I'm left wanting more explanation. Like: How did Chastains become this way?
Sorry, one more thing (I really like this topic). I'd been thinking out loud in the discussion about the harm to *myself* which I detect in judging *others* based on simplistic stereotypes. We ran out of time before I could express this new thought (new to me anyway): I am not an atomistic being. My self-identification is inextricably linked with the way I identify others. So, oversimplifying others is automatically oversimplifying myself. The danger in oversimplification is, I think, losing touch with what is meaningful about humanity: human potential & human freedom. - Drew