MIND MOVES:A dark upheaval can sometimes push us into discovering hidden strengths we never knew were there, writes TONY BATES
AS THE year draws to a close, we look back over our shoulder and wonder: “What was that all about?”
There will be no shortage of horrors and shocks to review in the run-up to New Year’s Eve. The only thing I will say is that 2009, for many people, was a long dark night, with very occasional shafts of light to lift their spirits. It was a year when it was all too easy to lose faith in the basic decency of human beings. It has been a year-long tug-of-war between cynicism and hope.
We all have our own personal snapshot memories of this past year. Mine is something very simple. It’s the memory of a drawing that someone shared with a group of people at the end of a short introductory course on mindfulness. A very simple drawing whose power was in what it symbolised.
But let me give you a little context for this event, before going any further.
This group was made up of about 30 people who had recently become unemployed and who were struggling with all that that implied in their lives.
For many of them, their loss of a job had been a form of identity theft. The “self” they had woken up to for years, the role it gave them among their families and friends, the means it gave them to express themselves in different ways, had been taken from them. Usually without warning and generally with little or no emotional support.
Sr Stan and I had offered a course on mindfulness to help to strengthen their sense of self and enable them to experience some moments of stillness in their everyday lives.
The man whose drawing I referred to earlier – let’s call him Peter – had recently lost his job in the construction trade, after 20 years of steady work. He was pushing 40. He had two children, including a little girl of seven who adored him.
At the close of the course, we invited people to get down on the floor with flip chart paper and a bunch of crayons and see if they could represent, in a non-verbal way, what this experience had meant to them.
Peter’s drawing was extremely simple: he used only a single crayon. He drew a smiley face surrounded by a square black line. The square line, he explained, was a mirror; the face inside it was his. This course, he said, had been the first time in his life that he had ever looked at himself.
And he thanked everybody for making it safe enough for him to do just that.
He knew nothing about psychology; he had never been on a course such as this one; he had never shared his feelings; he was a simple tradesman and knew nothing about meditation.
But he had seen the poster for this course in his local welfare office and something about it made him come.
And it had made a difference to his behaviour around his family. When he was first made redundant, he felt so ashamed he could hardly look at his daughter. But since he had been able to look at himself and believe in himself again, he had also been able to look her in the eye and accept her unconditional love.
Peter’s simple drawing had a powerful effect on everyone present. We recognised in his story many echoes of our own. How when we feel battered by life, we can so easily lose faith in our own basic goodness; how when we are ashamed of ourselves, we can’t look at those we love; and also how it can take some dark upheaval in our lives to make us look more deeply at ourselves and discover hidden strengths we had never appreciated were there.
As I write this last column for 2009, I think of the feedback I have received from readers throughout the past year. All of it has been immensely encouraging and affirming, especially when it has been critical and challenging. Thank you so much for that.
A column such as this is like a message in a bottle. One sends them forth in the hope they will wash up on a far-off shore, be picked up by someone and make sense to them.
I write these columns in the hope that they will be a mirror of sorts, which allow the reader to see some aspect of themselves in a new light. And with the hope that once in a while, they will reach those in very dark places and help them to see in the dark and to know that they are not alone.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – the National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie)