Web Camel Transport 24

The Twelfth Fairy: The Happiness of Assistance

Thursday, February 25, 2016 (written April 2, 2016)

In the milder version of “Sleeping Beauty,” a tale that made its way from gruesome narrative to love story, a princess is born to a hopeful and happy King and Queen. On the occasion of her christening 12 of 13 fairies are invited (sometimes in the story there are 7 of 8 invited). After eleven of the fairies have bestowed their blessings on the baby princess, the wicked crone breaks into the ceremony and, as revenge for being excluded, curses the princess to prick her finger on a spindle when she turns 16 and die. Just as the horrified crowd looks on, the 12^th fairy steps out. While unable to reverse the curse, she is able to mitigate it. The princess will indeed prick her finger on the spindle but will sleep for one hundred years until the kiss of a prince awakens her and the entire court. All sleep behind a ring of impenetrable thorns until the special prince comes along.

I love the mythic and archetypal quality of this story—even this Disney-esque version—because it captures what most of us experience periodically in life: Things go along relatively well until we hit a crisis of epic proportion: we or someone close to us gets ill, we lose a job or a house, we suffer the break-up of a committed relationship, a friend betrays us, we cheat or are cheated upon. Something in life violates us and everything good and happy takes a backseat to this earth-shaking situation that threatens to completely overwhelm or even kill us.

But then this is not the end of the story, the last chapter. Someone—a friend, a lover, a parent, a sister, a congregation, a group of coworkers—mitigates our situation. Suddenly there is light in the void, a hand holding ours, a healing infusion of hope and help and caring surrounding us and lifting us up. The 12^th fairy has arrived with a moist cool cloth for the fevered brow. Our curses may not be lifted entirely, but they are ameliorated.

Just as things can always get worse, they can always get better. We are connected within a matrix of energetic beings and channels of healing energy and inspiration promote our well-being. We also contribute to the well-being of others, and can do that more deliberately by becoming aware of those around us, hearing and seeing a need, and intervening even in a modest way.

As a psychotherapist I feel lucky to have ready-made opportunities to function as a Twelfth Fairy. Now, any seasoned therapist realizes that we are only a very small part of someone’s healing journey. The one hour a week or every two or three weeks that we spend with someone is far less contact than someone has with their family and friends—their inner circle of important others.

And yet, what is powerful, has to do with catalysis. The Twelfth Fairy co-catalyzes or revs the engine of healing within someone. After a therapeutic alliance has been well established, a client may say, “I could hear you in my head, Lisa, and I knew I had to broach the topic with my boss and set a boundary.” This is an example of introjection, where a sub-part of the client has been mobilized and is represented by an image of me. But really it is not me per se; it is the catalyzed sub-part of the client ready for action, fully engaged, and freed up to exercise options that had formerly been shut down or dormant.

In ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ we understand dormancy and shut down. A princess, with everything to live for, has ceased to act. She can only sleep in her life, until awakened. Awakenings come from moments of crisis, or from the dawning awareness that arrives out of lesson after lesson in life, or by the positive influence or presence of another being who gently awakens a de-activated or un-potentiated aspect of consciousness. The Twelfth Fairy and the kiss of the Prince have a lot in common. They both awaken healing energy within the recipient.

In our lives we harbor one or more sleeping princesses within. Regardless of gender, there are dormant or suppressed parts of ourselves that have something to contribute. Perhaps they have lived silently in the shadows due to shame, guilt, or fear. Perhaps they have never been invigorated with sources of nurturing and remain nascent as dried seeds. But to flourish, each sleeping princess must awaken and look around, and find herself fondly greeted by an encouraging and supportive presence.

So much inherent happiness thrives in doing what a Twelfth Fairy does, and in openly receiving what a Twelfth Fairy gives.

Guest Saddle: For whom have you functioned as a Twelfth Fairy? And who has offered you the hope, encouragement or validation of a Twelfth Fairy, even when you felt most in despair?

Web Camel Transport 23

Aperture: The Space through which Happiness Passes

Friday March 25, 2016 (for Wednesday, February 25, 2016)

It is gray and cold outside, technically below freezing. I woke up and turned up the heat. I had a good sleep with somewhat disturbing dreams, like a slight clotting of cream in a delicious cup of coffee. The American International School pictures have stirred up both happy and sad and scary memories and these provoked in me some regrets that I was not more attuned to, and involved in my siblings’ lives. I was fifteen to seventeen then, and scarcely aware of the importance of awareness and memory as pillars of the development of my Good Self. That I do not remember more, about each person—acquaintance or friend–with whom I shared some time and space and location, bothers me. Like any parent to a younger child or one’s own younger self-in-recollection, I feel the frustration of not being able to perambulate backward in time to impart the wisdom that only comes streaming into the hourglass in grains of sand. The aperture of now, and the aperture of then differ so widely.

But I feel grateful this morning for the quiet and solitude of my house and the land around me. There is goodness in that. Those persons on the planet whom I love, for whom I want to express my love, recede for a moment. I can gather my energy, refresh myself. Quiet does that. The presence of others in the house occupies my mind and heart, as if, at any moment someone might want or need something. I would like to provide for them their wishes, should my help be appropriate. Laundry, food or a drink, directions, the borrowing of an item, the finding of one. . . I stay tuned to those radio-like frequencies of others and do not filter them out. I listen, lean, anticipate, and attend. So when I sit here alone, and there is no one else in the house who might need or want anything, I luxuriate in the spaciousness of that.

Yet there is no static place of solitude or company that results in happiness. Happiness resides in the dance of cloud and sun, of heat and breezy relief from heat. Inner weather, from the sunny core of me to the ozone layer and the thinner stratospheres beyond, varies continuously. Like balancing–a vibration, a shifting, a seamless (if one is lucky enough to do this well) series of delicate adjustments. Like breathing—inspiration and expiration and the long golden thread of emptying and filling in between.

I miss my brother and have missed him every other day or so this March. He died in March 35 years ago. But there are places in my body that hold his absence gently, where once, a long time ago, I railed at his utter gone-ness at such a young age–27. And all those young people, particularly young men, who are dying now, in every town across the country due to opiate overdoses, has brought this back to me. The hypnotic spell of opiates, like a ghastly Stepford conversion, this Pied Piper of death, leads too many too soon to their graves. And yet, even the taking of drugs serves an initial, and so human purpose—relief. Relief from emotional pain, from self-loathing, from anger, from disappointment, from fatigue, from stress, from depression, from loneliness, from a sense of failure, from physical pain, from an inability to envision a better future, from all kinds of unsatiated hungers; from running, running, running away.

Rain is coming down. My phone says it is thirty degrees this morning. I imagine the birds, the squirrels, and the deer as cold and uncomfortable, focused on sheltering and trying to feed themselves and this makes me remember that I dreamed about squirrels flying last night. That I thought they were birds, but someone pointed out to me that a “flock” of squirrels had traversed a great distance of sky into a harbor of trees whose canopy quickly concealed them. It must have been because I walked with Lili yesterday in the new baby backpack. We saw some birds along the wooded path to the pond, as well as some squirrels. She felt heavy in the backpack but I loved her weight and the pressure it put on my sedentary thighs. The weight, the gravity, the air-born—perhaps all of that melded into the dream imagery.

The wind blew strongly and even with the two pairs of socks I put on Lili’s feet, I worried that her toes would get too cold so sometimes I put my hands behind my back and held her feet. Even though her cheeks reddened and her nose ran she still fell asleep before we reached home. So soundly that I unpacked her, removed the extra sweater, mittens and socks without her waking. I placed her on a bed with a quilt, carefully below her face in these days where babies are supposed to sleep without any blanketing. I watched her breathe, face relaxed, and took a nap next to her.

Exercise. Rest. Waking to the sweetness of baked yam and tiny pieces of ripe banana. A slow slip into the afternoon. Goodness of a day with Lili. Goodness now this day by myself.

Materiality—sand sifting through the aperture of the hourglass in grain upon grain; the sweet, thousand-kissed nearly pore-less skin of Lili’s cheek—holds hands with any thoughts in wisdom, in happiness.

Guest saddle: Through what opening does light flow into your life? When you are walking by the ocean, a lake, on a mountain? When you wake up, or revel in a conversation with a friend? How does your inner weather change? Dramatically or subtley? What is wild and precious to you? (words taken from Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day—“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”)

Web Camel Transport 22

The ‘Hamlet’ of Happiness

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

I spoke with my mother a couple of days ago. She recently turned 88 and had just gotten home from her lifelong learning class at Brandeis University where all the teachers are volunteer peers. This course, she said, was the best ever, a true Shakespearian scholar and retired professor at its helm. She is taking his class on Hamlet, a play she has read, and studied many times over the years from college onward through continuing education classes. Yet she sounded incredibly enthusiastic to have her nose in this play yet again; to feel equally or more enchanted than ever by the synergy of familiarity with the work, on one hand, and the novelty of what this particular professor and class brought to it, on the other.

To read a prized work with the intimacy of the scholar and the curiosity of the explorer excited her, and hearing about it excited me. To see and hear with new eyes and ears, even what feels familiar, represents a hallmark of enjoyment. Things only get old when our modes of experience get stale, when we have used up our line of inquiry, and when we have turned jaded and cynical.

To read a work of literature is to co-create its meaning. Whatever the author intends, or writes unintentionally (subconsciously), takes on meaning within us as we bring to bear our own intelligence and experiences as lenses. Through our reading the words on the page take flight in the skies of our imaginations. Reading is like having a dialogue with the material, and if we are lucky this conversation sparks a love affair or an inspirational, even transformative encounter.

There is so much that seems difficult about aging. Naively, I once thought that along with our acquired wisdom over the years—should we be lucky enough to live a long time—that we would also grow to accept our declines in memory, in muscle tone, in agility and flexibility, in speed; that somehow the slow dulling of vision, hearing, smell and taste would somehow feel compensated for by a growing appreciation for the small things.

What I have learned is that we tend to have a sense of ourselves that persists.(And neurons with which we are born that are still with us–yeah, baby neurons!) If we are lucky enough to house a decent memory, there is some through-line, some arc of chapters in our lives that make sense as part of our story. And it is difficult to reconcile the creaky joints, perhaps the increased pain, the dulling capabilities, with who we “really” are.

Although older age can produce greater happiness in some ways, and some alacrity and quickness with a huge data base in our chosen fields, it does not often happen without feelings of loss—the losses of those family members and friends who have left this plane, of course, but also the losses of our major identifiers—professional identities, community participations, etc. Many elders feel almost invisible, as if they have grayed into the atmosphere. And certainly we live in an impatient culture of elbows, with little interest in making room for those moving at a slower pace.

To love something—one’s garden with its flowers petaling open anew under the morning sky; a favorite piece of literature; a symphony, etc.—and to love it again and again, with fresh ears and eyes, well, that is savoring. The happiness of savoring, of ‘Hamlet.’

Guest saddle: What do you love, over and over? The smile of your baby or grandbaby? The smell of the lilacs wafting through the summer-open windows? A piece of music that reminds you of happy times? Are you giving yourself enough opportunities to revel in such happiness?