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October 23 Baggage from the PastHere is an extract taken from the book by William Isaacs "Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together". In concluding chapters, there is something something very interesting.
He wrote: "We are taught when we are very young to lock away behaviours and attitudes that do not fit. This civilising process is quite necessary, but it has a cost." Then he went on to quote an example shared by Robert Bly. Bly said:
"Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don't like, we put in the bag. By the time we go to school, our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say:'Good children don't get angry over such little things.' So we take out anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve...................our bags were a mile long."
Here is the interestiong portion:
"The rejected parts of ourselves do not develop. What remains in the bag regresses or devolves, Bly says, toward barbarism, making it increasing awkward to live with. We spend our first twenty years putting things into our bag, trying to be acceptable, but splitting ourselves in half. We spend the rest of our lives trying to get these rejected parts of ourselves, our shadows, reintegrated into ourselves."
So, can you imagine each one of us trying to live out of a confused mixture of ourselves (either in the present or from the bag). No wonder we get into all kinds of relationship problems. Successful and purposeful living, therefore, belongs to those who are able to deal with what is in their bags, come to terms with these and then reintegrate them back into their lives.
Essentially, it is self-discovery. It is about finding our true selves (once lost when we were younger)! TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://mad-and-dum.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9F6555DD33A7EA5C!632.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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