Capacity of Love
I was seven years old and watching my father. He was rolling on the floor shouting that he was dying. My mother was standing and watching. She had put a blanket on the floor, under him as he rolled in his excrement. I felt no pity. The only thought I remember was that I would never sink so low.
I was a 7-year-old from a poor family. But I had a sense of pride, a courageous heart, a wonderful mother and buckets of love from my grandmothers. My father had another side – he was amazingly creative; he could create such wonderful art and tell spell-binding stories. But most of the time he lived in fear, and he drank himself to bravery.
At the age of eleven, in my maths class my inspirational teacher asked me to come and show the rest of my class how to solve a maths problem. I went up to the blackboard. I was happy to show off how clever I was, and also to help everybody else in doing so.
When I sat back down the teacher asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. “I’m going to be an occupational therapist” I told her. She couldn’t hide the disappointment, and said, “Well if you change your mind, you would make an excellent maths teacher”. In the event, I became a little bit of both.
By that time the family had escaped my father. Looking back, I can see that I had already learned that creativity can be the most wonderful way to wellness. Maybe that’s why I’d had the idea of becoming an occupational therapist. When my father was drawing, he was at his best, and then I could be so proud to say, “Look at what my dad can do!”.
Here is what I have now learned. It is that when we create, our minds can become still. When we are focused on the subject or object we are bringing to life, in that stillness, we connect to our own innate well-being, our oneness and our godliness. Only between the active thoughts can we connect to our true selves.
It’s almost as though we wear super dark glasses all the time when the sun is out. For years we walk around in these dark glasses, and they become so much part of us that no longer perceive them as a separate thing. Our eyes adjust to the reality that the sun never shines brightly. We surround ourselves with expensive sun substitutes to help us see, while we continue to wear the dark glasses.
When we create, we are taking those glasses off. We can throw away the sun substitutes and see more clearly than ever seen before, in a beautiful perfect light. But then we go back to autopilot and put the dark glasses on. And again, we surround ourselves with sun substitutes to help us see better in the darkness, when all we really needed to do is take off the bloody glasses.
Does that resonate in some way?
My father’s substitutes were alcohol and gambling. The dark glasses blinded him not only from the suns light but from love. He could only experience love when the glasses were off. But as he grew more fearful his emotional capacity to see in the beautiful light of the sun became more and more diminished. So, he kept the glasses on and substituted love and sunlight with addiction.
His story is extreme, but I think we all have the capacity and even tendency to wear our own dark glasses, and seek our form of sun substitute. Over commitment to work, an addiction to winning, keeping ourselves small, holding deep love and connection at a distance ‑ the list is long.
When do you hold on tightly to your dark glasses? What are your sun substitutes? How connected to do feel to the essence of you? How much love do you feel for yourself? How brightly do you allow yourself to shine? Or do you choose to stay small?
When do you feel the true power of sunlight in your life, just imagine what would it take to walk in that sunlight every day. May I suggest that possibility is only a thought away, a click of your fingers, a tap of your heels?
As the quote from Jung points to it is only in experiencing something that you truly know it. I wonder how many of us truly know love or know how beautiful we are. I believe we can all see ourselves and those around us more fully with a shift in thought, a removal of the dark glasses. You may choose to see the substitutes for what they are and let them fall away in an instant. If you remove your dark glasses and can be brave enough to experience the full power of the sun, it will still be there, even when the clouds roll in..
