A Familiar Story

................................................................................................................................................................................

However subtly, however difficult to discern, what we believe issues in what we do. Our theories are compasses, if not maps.1

Ah, you believe only houses are constructed? I construct myself continually and I construct you, and you do the same. And the construction lasts as long as the material of our feelings doesn't crumble and as long as the cement of our will lasts. Why do you believe firmness of will is so highly touted, and constancy of feelings? The former has only to waver a little, and the latter has only to be altered by one degree or change ever so slightly, and it's goodbye to our reality! We realize immediately that it was only our delusion.2

These creative fantasies, this imaginative circumambulating of one's partner, are of the greatest importance in every human relationship ... Everyone needs to fantasy about himself, to circle about and awaken his own potential in mythological or fairy tale form.3

The psyche constructs; it invents images and the mind follows them as its guides; "guiding fictions," Adler calls them.4

We see what our ideas ... allow us to see.5

................................................................................................................................................................................

This is a story about …


A, B and C are flatmates as well as good friends. For various reasons A and B frequently forget to wash their dishes, meaning that C will often find himself washing up for them. This is a regular and ongoing situation. How should C feel about this, and how should he act? Let’s imagine how the story may progress ...

1. C could have words with A and B and politely ask them to do their own dishes, explaining that it is unfair that he should have to clean up after them.

2. He could indignantly demand that they change their selfish ways, pointing out that it is ridiculous that they should expect him to have to repeatedly wash up their mess.

3. He could take the route of martyrdom and carry on doing their dishes for them, all the while feeling like his good nature is being exploited and building up a slow burning resentment for his two friends.

There are clearly many ways of handling the situation, dependent upon how C chooses to view what is happening to him. This, then, is the crux of the matter; how C views the situation will determine how he reacts to it.

What is your story?

................................................................................................................................................................................

“The way we imagine our lives is the way we are going to go on living our lives. For the manner in which we tell ourselves about what is going on is the genre through which events become experiences.” 6

C’s view of the situation will arise from whatever story he chooses to tell himself. Let’s look again at the three courses of action offered above. In the first, C tells himself a story in which A, B and himself are all reasonable people, people who are connected through the primary bond of friendship – a bond that is forged upon important notions of respect and equality. In this story, C believes in his friends, and believes that if he gives them a chance, they will do the right thing.

The second story paints a different picture. In it C has, against his will, been shunted into the role of victim, a role that he is not comfortable playing. He has never played this role before and feels that it is not befitting of his character, and he will do all he can to escape this fate. The bond of friendship has been seconded to power relations. C feels that he is being taken advantage of, and his only course of action – his only way to regain power, and an equal footing with his friends - is to fight against this inequality. C becomes the freedom fighter, and all he wants is justice.

The third story once again has C as the victim, only this time it is a role that C feels somewhat more comfortable with. Whilst C loves his friends, he realises that they are only human and that, as such, they are privy to all the weaknesses that befit our kind. He sees these weaknesses as inevitable; an essential component of the bittersweet nature of human relations. In this fantasy C is the martyr, and his suffering is an inescapable part of his lot.

These are just three examples of the many stories that could be told in this situation. We'll consider one final story.

Carry each other

................................................................................................................................................................................

In each of the examples above, it has been taken for granted that to have to wash up after someone else is to some extent an indignity; a sign of subservience, or of unbalanced power relations. But what if we were to re-frame this act? What if, instead of being a subservient act, it was considered an affectionate one?

What if to wash up after someone else was seen as a privilege – a way of making manifest your affection for the other person?

In this instance, A, B and C are good friends. At its best friendship contains an implicit contract: we carry our friends when they are weak, just as they carry us when we are weak. For this contract to be effective, we must first recognize that we are all imperfect; because if nobody is perfect, then it follows that we all must be carried in some way, and at some time. Through carrying others, we also allow ourselves to be carried.

In practical terms, this carrying could range from arguing on behalf of a friend (the archetype of this form of carrying being the lawyer; that is, someone who argues professionally on your behalf) to providing council in a time of need (the psychotherapist) to literally carrying and taking care of someone because they are injured (the medic). We all carry each other daily, in moments and acts that may often go unseen.

The importance of this idea within society can be seen in its countless repetition within the various stories that have guided us over time; from ancient myth and religious parable, through to the plotlines of various popular films.

To carry those weaker than us is an act of affection that has its roots in love. Yet, whilst it may be easy to love our friends, the dictum to ‘love thy neighbour’ may be a little harder to follow. Psychologist Erich Fromm talks about this distinction;

“… [love] is inseparably connected with the social realm. If love means to have a loving attitude towards everybody, if love is a character trait, it must necessarily exist in one’s relationship not only with one’s family and friends, but towards those with whom one is in contact through one’s work, business, profession. There is no ‘division of labour’ between love for one’s own and love for strangers. On the contrary, the condition for the existence of the former is the existence of the latter.”7

Fromm sees love as an act of faith; in this sense, to love someone – to express faith in one human being - is to express faith in all human beings: to love everyone. It isn’t that you love this person; rather, you simply love. In this way love becomes a capacity, and to be able to love is to be able to love all, not only the beloved. He goes on to contrast this love with the idea of fairness;

“While a great deal of lip service is paid to the religious ideal of love of one’s neighbour, our relations are actually determined, at their best, by the principle of fairness. Fairness meaning not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services, and in the exchange of feelings. ‘I give you as much as you give me’, in material goods as well as in love, is the prevalent ethical maxim in capitalist society.” 8

Fromm suggests that in our relations we may often be guided by an ethics of fairness instead of an ethics based on love. Why is this distinction important? He goes on to say;

“Fairness ethics lend themselves to confusion with the ethics of the Golden Rule. The maxim ‘to do unto others as you would like them to do unto you’ can be interpreted as meaning ‘be fair in your exchange with others’. But actually, it was formulated originally as a more popular version of the Biblical ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. Indeed, the Jewish-Christian norm of brotherly love is entirely different from fairness ethics. It means to love your neighbour, that is, to feel responsible for and one with him, which fairness ethics means not to feel responsible, and one, but distant and separate; it means to respect the right of your neighbour, but not to love him.” 9

We see then, that to ‘love thy neighbour’ is also to feel responsible for them, not simply to respect their status in a bond based on "fairness". From the feeling of universal responsibility flowers the will to carry.

With this in mind, we’ll return to our story. In this instance, A, B and C are not strangers; they are friends. We’ve already reframed the act of washing a dish – it is no longer a subservient chore, rather it is a way of showing affection, a way of caressing; a concrete act of love that says (if only to go unheard): “I will carry you because I love you.”

A galaxy of ideas

................................................................................................................................................................................

We’ve seen how a new idea – in this instance reframing the act of washing up dishes - can allow access to different ways of thinking, and can open the page on a new story.

We are all caught within our own webs of meaning, the heroes or victims of the stories that we tell ourselves. If we see the mind as a metropolis, then our city limits are the extent of the tales we currently tell and the meanings that we value. If our vocabulary is limited then we may reside within a town; a constant repetition of familiar places and people – and, indeed, this may be a comfort. For others, the city may stretch for miles, with districts dangerous and unknown. And always we may wonder: what galaxies of meaning lie outside of our own?

The advantage of a new idea is that it allows us access to new areas, and in so doing enables us to enlarge our internal landscape. New ideas can also, as in the story of the dishes, allow us to reframe old ones, giving a different vantage point on a familiar area.

If we believe, as psychologist James Hillman suggests, that we are the “creation of the stories we tell ourselves”10 then it may be worth, every once in a while, reading them through.

Who are we playing?

Have we outgrown this story?

Does it still speak to us?

How did it start?

And how, more importantly, might it end?







Related posts:-
Construct it differently

Endnotes

................................................................................................................................................................................

1 Adam Phillips. Side Effects, p.77
2 Pirandello, Luigi. One, No One & One Hundred Thousand, p.41
3 Guggenbühl-Craig, Adolf. Power In The Helping Professions, p.47
4 Hillman, James. Healing Fiction, p.104
5 Ibid., p.36
6 Ibid., p.23
7 Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving, p.101
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p.101-2
10 Hillman, James. We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - And the World's Getting Worse (co-authored with Michael Ventura), p.27

Post-script
................................................................................................................................................................................

Some more thoughts on carrying

And conversation: we may often betray ourselves when trying to communicate through speech. We often don't have the time to think things through as much as we'd like, and the temporal demands of conversation may not allow for the precaution of an internal proof-reader. With this in mind, we may end up communicating poorly what it is we intend to get across, or even communicating something else entirely.

Carrying in this instance would be a kind of pardoning by the other, a filling-in of your gaps and an active searching for your intentions. In carrying you, they would do their best to understand what it is you are trying to communicate. The opposite would be to purposefully misunderstand or obfuscate your intentions.

Related posts:-
Living with Roughness
Carry Each Other