This month Debra and I are going back to writing separate articles for the newsletter. Debra’s article, “A Positive Perspective on Projection,” follows this one. As had been our habit, Debra started writing her article first and sent the draft to me for revision and addition. This time, her draft was too good to change and too complete for me to add anything of interest, so we decided to let it stand as her article this month. That, of course, left me with the challenge of coming up with something new to write about. Problems and opportunities often go hand-in-hand.
It also gives you the opportunity to see the similarities and differences in the way Debra and I perceive things. In my opinion, the four positions of TA (see Debra’s article) are insufficient, as neither OK nor Not OK is absolute. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. One of my favorite poets, William Blake explained that contraries are required for progress. Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are both necessary for progress. In TA, OK is the equivalent of Reason; Not OK is the equivalent of Energy. Change is often considered “evil” in one way or another.
The first automobiles, for example, were considered smelly, noisy, unreliable substitutes for horses and buggies. Change isn’t always for the better, of course. Things can get worse as well as better. Change tends to be recursive: two steps forward, one step back. In Enlightenment Now, one of my favorite nonfiction authors, Steven Pinker, addresses the concerns many have about the current state of the world. When we look at the current state of affairs, it is easy to see problems everywhere. If you’re not fearful of Mexicans sneaking across the border to pick fruits and vegetable in the States, you might be fearful of what the Trump Presidency means for the fate of the world.
Because fear “sells,” stories that generate and stoke fear are increasingly common in today’s media. If you watch the news, you know what I mean. Our preoccupation with fear-based stories has a purpose, of course. Disasters can and do happen, and the best way to make sure one doesn’t happen to you is to know how to avoid them. Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes happen. Leonard Cohen says it this way:
The challenge, of course, isn’t to escape the inevitable. As W. Somerset Maugham points out in Appointment in Samarra, death eventually “catches” us all. The challenge is to do the best we can with the time we have available so that we can feel that our lives have been well-lived, full of meaning and purpose, Tennyson’s Ulysses says in the poem about the aging hero:
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
And this is where Debra’s article for this month applies.