When Shit Gets Real
Jack was over it. Had been for years. Ever since his ex caused that scene at the Aldi checkout. He’d never tried to shuffle so many groceries in so little time. When the jar of honey hit the floor and all over Sue’s new high tops, it wasn’t the reassuring sound of the caring bloke behind the scanner that Jack remembers. It was the words ‘you idiot’ declared instantly from a range too damn close that shredded him like machine gun fire to his calloused fleshy heart.
He recoiled. Inwardly. Trying to shrink and disappear. The way he had when his old man scolded him for not trimming the edges right, or not looking him in the eye, or speaking that way to his mother. It was the way his mother retracted when his dad looked her in the eye, used that tone, and scrunched his shoulders up before dropping them and protruding his barrel chest above his protruding belly.
Even Jacks boss at the Surveying Company Office where he’d been working for over six years already, spoke to him like a nobody. Jack felt that most the people in his everyday life spoke down to him, and really had no idea who he was.
I wondered out loud if Jack knew the answer to that question. ‘Who are you Jack?’ came my provocation, gently yet ensuring that he understood the question.
‘I dunno’ he replied listlessly. Confused by the question.
Even more so I wanted to know if Jack knew how to feel beyond the density of the blanket of sorrow he carried over his shoulders. He’d been formally diagnosed with depression. And told the pills he would be on for six to twelve months would take the sharp edge off. When we met up he declared he couldn’t imagine ever getting off the pills themselves.
When I asked him if he was still ‘with depression’ as the Psychiatrist had stated, Jack said simply ‘whatdyamean, it’s a part of me’.
Jacks story is a variation of the countless variations of the same theme that’s endemic to our western cultural way of being at this point of our historical unfolding. Open hearted , sensitive boys who have adopted prescriptive numbing in one form or another after a turbulent, usually angry adolescence. Conforming to work and relationship expectations, the shadow of their former selves, is entrenched in societal expectations layered with hopelessness. Making money doing jobs that are only relatively satisfying 40 to 60 hours per week, buying expensive things, usually cars and houses, and coming home to more work, and fractured relationships have become the norm. And of course it’s all relative. But for those enjoying this modality at the impassioned end of the spectrum, they make up a very very small cohort. Normally dominated by alpha males, somehow adept at busting beyond the pain barrier, and neglecting to ask the questions that the rest of us can’t ignore.
As Psychotherapists we work with the part of our life experience that have been disavowed. It’s the moments of shock, or incongruence that go beyond our comprehension. We’ve all had them, and all of us from a very early age. It’s the bigger dissonances to our otherwise peaceful and safe existence, that stay with us, gnawing at us to work out what the fuck happened.
It’s our work, in these short little lives we’re living, to create understanding around these events. And hence to become free from the burden they place on our lives. For some it's depression like Jack where we can’t cope and push everything down so deep that they fill us with so much stuffing we’re barely able to feel our own pulse anymore beyond the body’s subsequent sedation. Others ruminate wildly looking and failing to find answers. These experiences are in the body, they’re felt, but it’s the mind that’s scrapping for solutions.
Symptoms like hyperactivity, and attention deficiency have become the norm too - further indicators of our unconscious drives trying to form experiences definitively clear enough, so we can finally understand where they’ve come from and become free from these energies
The smashed honey jar was one of those signs for Jack that one way or another, something had to change.
He considered suicide. Again. But it felt so dramatic. Like such a statement. It wasn’t him. His partner was on medications for numerous so called disorders as well, and unfortunately with exception to sharp criticisms, was going through more than she could handle herself, let alone try and help Jack out. The more time went on, and interest rates went up, and the good times they’d been hanging on to in their lives behind them disappeared like the setting sun, the further her dreams of becoming a mother faded too into the distance. Between the two of them and their unborn children, they shared a closet of wet blankets, that bound them tightly to their misfortunes. The pills were good for translating a sense of misery to apathy. But not for lives worth celebrating.
I’m retelling this story because it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s pathways to happiness that don’t require to become Born Again, or last only hours to minutes. We’re open vessels of love and peace at our foundation, and this remains the case - throughout the various light frequencies of our lives. Throughout our darkest times. As long as we recognise in whatever way it may come, the sense of peace in others, we’re able to recreate that, access that for ourselves.
In being human, the top of the totem pole of all the living species when it comes to our capacity for conscious awareness, we have the ability to consciously emulate our felt experience of whatever we choose. It may only be for a fleeting moment but with practice we can master the recreation of these favoured experiences.
It’s two part. Remembering who we are at the core of our being - love and peace - requires that we consciously choose what experiences we want to create. But in unison, we need to identify the symbols of our suffering with understanding, and hence create the transformation of wisdom. These wisdoms release us from the layers obscuring the purity of our divine souls, or in less esoteric terms, we get to strip ourselves bare from those dirty sodden blankets, and emanate with the vitality and spirit that we came into this world to practice.
If you think it’s a job to be done alone, as ironically so many of our mundane endeavours suggest this is all about, you’re wrong. We’re in this together. We’re all feeling the pinch. It’s a collective experience. It’s where we’re at, in history. Every point has it’s own imprint. Ours is that we’re less connected, less content, and busier than ever. On the positive side, we’ve got more awareness and wisdom at our fingertips than ever before too. Now is the time to be brave and to break the cycles of self imposted collective suffering.
We do it together. Starting with becoming more open. More loving. We ask more sincerely, more authentically and more vulnerably the questions of others, as to how they’re doing, and we embody the principle and hope that others can mirror the sentiment. The conversations with open compassionate hearts, give us permission to say we’re not OK. And in itself we are relieved that we can say it out loud, to be heard. It feels instantly less burdensome.
But it’s not all ‘talk therapy’ it’s getting out of the head, and into the allowing of our felt experience, presently and with courageous awareness. It’s from this state of the unknown, that we can be released from our fears, and move into a significanlty elevated state of being. It evokes hope, faith, and positivity. The practice reveals the path with more confidence.
Look for those around you that look like they might know a life that feels satisfying. Ask them the questions. These are your elders, the role models, that have done the work. There are people like me too that have made walking this walk our life’s work - our purpose. We’re here for you.
Jack walked away from the smashed honey jar on the supermarket floor. He walked past the car, questioning whether or not he should wait for his girlfriend. He was dazed but determined not to walk the way he had so many times before. He took the experience as his universal guidance that it was time that he cracked open his heart and find himself people and experiences that could reflect his glimmer of hope that things could change.
He left his job, got a part gig, doing what he always loved, being outdoors working, planting trees, and caring for plants. He moved out from the home he and his girlfriend had purchased and still owed hundreds of thousands on the mortgage. He didn’t lay it any rules or declarations, he simply followed his heart. And in the moment of truth when he found himself declaring to his best mate that has always seen him for the beautiful human that he is, that 'I never really felt passionately in love with her’, he declared just as profoundly that he had some significant work to do on himself.
He couldn’t do it alone, but he also knew he couldn’t do it in a toxic relationship that had surpassed all expiry dates for time enough spent trying.
Jack got some help. And he joined a group of men, that were brave like him, and were open to sharing.
Together they started stepping along that path in the right direction.