Over the last week I have been through an extraordinary range of emotions, a roller coaster of excitement swiftly followed by disappointment and despair. But out of it is emerging something new….
From a series of seemingly unconnected events – a hospital procedure, a bout of intense loneliness, being inspired by the backdrop of a video broadcast, a friend in need – I woke one morning with what I thought was a re-visioning of a dream.
One of the various threads that I have been exploring in my life has been the notion of running expressive arts workshops. Not as therapy, but which would be therapeutic. Not to diagnose, judge or interpret peoples’ individual art, but to allow the freedom and permission to create and express whatever was going on for them in each moment. A process, not an outcome. A continuing journey, not a one-stop fix. An exploration, an on-going experience, not a fait accompli. An opening up and letting go, not a Ten Steps to Enlightenment formula.
So back to my vision, my mission – to create an environment in which this unfolding could take place, where the space did the healing, not the interventions or the content. It would be somewhere rural, immersed in nature, with some sort of basic wood structure/workshop, surrounded by flowers and woods and birds and wildlife. People would come to hang out, be themselves, make their art, make friends or revel in the peace and quietness of alone time.
A Space To Be.
To be authentic, free, released from convention and rules and societal pressures for however short a time, a place to discover what is and what is not important, a chance to drop the barriers and have fun, to Play with a capital P.
And then I told a friend.
She suggested that perhaps I should do this for myself before offering it to others. That perhaps I would be bypassing my own needs, denying myself what I was craving. As she was saying this I nose dived from extreme excitement to total hopelessness in a nanosecond. Complete Defeat in One Easy Move.
I wasn’t cross with my friend. I didn’t jump up and storm out. I knew she was right but I hadn’t wanted to address it. But the despair came because, even though it was, and still is, a viable dream, I was using the whole concept as a sticking plaster, a way of distracting myself from what I was feeling and needing. Coming from that place it could never work because I would be attending to the wrong thing, the wrong people. I’d be putting the cart before the horse.
As a last ditch attempt to rescue my dream I did rather lamely proffer the idea to my friend that perhaps you need to give to others what you need for yourself, you teach what you need to learn, you act out the wounded healer. But I knew I was on to a losing wicket – these were merely out-dated intellectual concepts that may once have helped me feel better but which no longer held much sway.
Following the bursting of my bubble I went into complete dismissal mode, abandoning any hope of an exhilarating life and resigning myself to a life of drudgery and unfulfilling work. It seemed there were only two choices – fantasy, creativity and magic or humdrum, ordinary and suffocating repression.
A week later however I am beginning to see a third choice, the subject of my next post.
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