On Humidity/Humility
Dear Witness,
I was going to say thank you for your email, but I suppose we have transcended normal email format, and it feels more like letter writing or something of that ilk. It’s definitely a nice point of intention to find the time amidst busy London life to sit and write so…
It really does sound like a 'challenge abroad'… it seems you had to surrender in order to acclimatise, to weather, the circumstances and the experience itself. But also perhaps to surrender to the desire of ‘achieving' something, and to just be... (be taken over by the humidity/ humility of it all!). I wonder if it is only when we let go of grasping, letting go of our pre-existing ideas of the lessons we may learn from such experiences, that we begin to really ‘volunteer’ ourselves. And like you have, notice the smaller things like a child choosing to sit next to you, as well as the feeling of being chosen! Im glad it has left a mark on you, as a real lesson should do. Working with children, I found, is so different and can be much harder than working with the inner childs' of adults, simply because the language is not there yet.
I couldnt agree more when you said ’no real news reaches us’. It is one of the reasons I opt out of it when I can. It seems that the immediacy of your environment has brought particular suffering to your attention and perhaps a helplessness (which you described as shame?). Sometimes I feel the more we are aware of others suffering, the more we can begin to take it on. But the very fact you are aware of it is a form of holding, and gives you some power to act accordingly. I often find in Eastern cultures there are such different ways of operating, and this ‘gentleness’ you speak of noticing perhaps translates into a resilience too. That has certainly been my experience growing up in Asia and then coming to the UK, where I was struck by the emphasis on hierarchy and ‘stoicism’ — perhaps a fear, rather than surrender, around the things we cannot control.
My thesis is called: ‘Bed, Bath, and Beyond: From Haunting to Holding in the Therapists Self’, and is namely about feeling’s of fear, containment and dependency and how these can manifest as entities, through the body, and through a desire to offer others something one might not feel they have had. Which is why I have found myself, a therapist! But yes I experienced an epiphanic awakening on that field which formed the substance of my paper. A full circle, non linear reckoning that was revived by both my present and future selves- but timely (!), at a point where maybe I was in present/presence to be able to attune to or actualise the meaning making. It’s a long paper and quite vulnerable at times, hard to read with some trigger warning but maybe you’d like to read it one day.
It is so special that you use the word threshold to describe how you have witnessed my journey, as that is the very word that has found me this summer. The word has given me some relief, and also been a small reminder to respond rather than react. Perhaps it can be your word too for the work you have been doing and the lessons you have been learning.
I feel I have taken a rather philosophical lens in my response, but also acknowledging my desire to be more in touch with this language whilst currently feeling uncomfortable on a hyper-commercialised cruise ship (family holiday), and it feels as though I am living in a simulation. Maritime kitsch!
Watch this space between…..
