Hi all, (first sent April 19)

Here's my short reflection from last week. Happy Week #6, from my cave to yours.

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"Do I dare believe, and let love lead my life?" -- David Wilcox (singer-songwriter)

Well, there goes Week #5. We are spending the whole month of April inside. As the weather warms-- as it is supposed to this week-- I presume it will be harder and harder for us to stay inside. We've been good so far, but this is not normal or natural. Especially for us in SoCal. What is this thing called "the indoors"? Spring has sprung. And we have to stay inside.  

Take bears: it's one thing for a bear to be in hibernation during the winter. Sleep: beautiful sleep. And if, by chance, winter is a little longer one year, a bear will stay in and wait: more sleep-- yay! But it's another thing to ask her to stay in her cave with her cubs once it is no longer the season to do so. Are you kidding me!??! Bear is ravenous. Bear wants to be bear. After all, the salmon are waiting...mmm... salmon... the bees are buzzing... mmm... honey... And her cubs need to go outside. They really, really do. They have way too much energy for her cave to handle. (get it? get it? :))

The outside: the melting snow, the fresh air, the new hope. Here, out of the darkness of the cave, is where she can introduce her cubs to this new hope. She teaches them how to survive, how to play, how to engage the wild. Her goal is to teach her cubs how to be their best bear-selves so as to no longer need her over time. And that goal can only be reached by living in the real forest (climbing trees, finding bugs, fighting against predators), in the real hills (tumbling, falling and getting up again), in the real streams (drinking, fishing, washing), in the real schools. I mean... (stay in the metaphor Deborah!) She can instruct her cubs in her cave all day long, igniting their imaginations as to what the outdoors might be like, but she and her cubs also need to live! Be bears! They need to bump up against reality to see what parts of their theory and imaginations are true. (These are very conscious bears.)

"I've never seen a salmon, Mom... those aren't real... Even if they are real, why in the world do they go up-stream?... they're dumb..."  

Da' bears! 

Taking our cue from these bears, we too can see that living in the real world involves getting dirty, falling, playing, fighting, eating, washing-- and then doing it again, and again, and again. Learning new things, discovering new facts, changing our minds-- like, salmon are real: and they are delicious. But what happens when we are forced (except if you live in Florida!?!?!) to stay in our caves, er, our homes past the time that is helpful for our sanity? We can't get dirty. We can't learn. Can we change our minds?  

I mean, we can only live in our heads for so long. Right!?! We must do. Yes, we must imagine, but we also must create. We humans, at our best, are not just to be in a state of awe-- though that is the beginning--, but also in a process of transforming that awe into creating something meaningful, something livable, for ourselves and for others. The psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott calls this our capacity to "play with reality". We imagine, we try, we bump up against reality, we learn, we deconstruct, we imagine some more... pretty soon, we have created a painting, a sport, a building... a society. Winnicott in a very small nutshell... my teachers would be proud.

We may have an advantage over the bears. And it's not just opposable thumbs-- though those are necessary. For us to take advantage of our advantage, however, we are going to have to find our "new" hope, not in the change of the seasons-- though that can be a source of courage, a sign that winters do not last forever--, but in something deeper, something more fundamental. Something livable, life-giving, something sustainable, even and especially in hibernation. 

No, it's not the economy. (Though we Americans tend to believe that that is the root of our happiness.) Our hope is in love. There, I said it: love. The Beatles knew it, and so can we. Love of self and love of the other. Not the pie-in-the-sky love-- love in theory--, but the one that is powerful enough to help us garner the courage to see clearly the reality of our lives as they are right now, to see all that is being exposed in our relationships with each other: familial, communal, national, and even international. The kind of love that gets dirty, falls, learns. The kind of love that begets the courage to love. 

Where do we love well? and where do we love poorly, even hate? What are we afraid of? Therapy is a space for these hard questions to surface.  

Love is the force which helps us open our imaginations towards creating a new self, family, community, society that is more livable than the one we currently have. In the real. Not in theory. Love is not mean. Love is the opposite of hoarding. Love is endlessly hopeful because it knows its power to create, and recreate, and recreate again and again.  

Will we allow ourselves to be recreated in ourselves and in our world, opposable thumbs and all? Do we dare believe and let love lead the way?

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"See" you all this week. 

Deborah

P.S. Next week (start of week 7), I will be changing platforms: from Zoom to doxy.me. It's better with privacy and it seems to be what therapists who care about such things use. I care. I'll send instructions as I come to understand them :)