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On social class and therapy
Here’s the thing. Travelling is really educational. I just came back from Venice and realised that on my journey to identify all my current biases (a work which is expected in the first year of counselling studies) I have omitted something very obvious, something that really bothers me and on some occasions even affects me in my daily life. Walking the streets of Venice with my son, I was taking a lot of photos of Venetian masks. I find them fascinating, grotesque and – if found in the right part of the city – really impressive too. My son asked me about the very idea of Venetian masks and I had to look it up. Turns out there is a theory that they were initiated as a response to a very rigid social class of Venice (or Italy). We don’t think about it much nowadays in many parts of Europe but if you live in the UK long enough you might come across the idea or signs of social class. As a simple example let me tell you that one of my neighbors until today has not acknowledged me as her equal simply because I don’t own a house. It took me a long time to figure out the reality of the class system in the UK but somehow by now I got used to it. I refuse to play its rules with the assumption that my planned ignorance makes the other party responsible for adjusting to a new tone of our conversations (whether they chose to do so it’s really their choice), but I got used to it. However, I have not considered what the class system means for my future therapy work and my current studies. I need to reflect on it more and build it into my practice too.
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Socks
“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone -
Masks
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
Oscar Wilde -
Copernicus
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance -
Future
“I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
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Ojczyzna
“Language is the only homeland.”
Czesław Miłosz -
Fog
“THE fog comes
on little cat feet.It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.”Robert Frost
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Our 2017 registrations open tomorrow!
We are very very excited:) From tomorrow onwards you will be able to register your events for our 2017 Festival! Just go here, read the Organiser’s Guide and fill out the form.
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Walls
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Work and life balance
I am really tired now because I was organising a Christmas Fair for our local care home and pretty much had to do it on my own. I am really, really fortunate that many of my local friends and contacts agreed to help and the event itself was lovely. It’s so rewarding to see elderly people celebrate with their families but also socialise with new faces. It was warm, full of kindness and I do feel ready for Christmas now. But it was also quite demanding and I had to step back from very active studies to just covering the basics of my work in counselling course. I was prepared that some weeks or months might be like this, but the last few weeks of fair organising took their toll and I really need to think about resting now. We will be traveling for Christmas to visit family so I hope to rest then, but I really should not wait another month to do so. I am back to long walks, allotment and psychology books making peace with the fact that I cannot be 100% present in every part of my life all the time. Leffing go, relaxing, accepting the facts and demands of life is the best I can do now.
