We're often told that dwelling on where depression comes from, is wallowing, but many people genuinely want to find out why they're like they are. Children whose feelings and fears tended to be dismissed by parents, grow up into adults still afraid of feelings and it takes a lot of courage to want to find out more about yourself, so that you can improve your life and your relationships with others, through insight. We should be encouraging everyone to venture on journeys of personal development. When we understand ourselves better, and learn to genuinely love and respect ourselves more, we are able to trust the love of others, we become better husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers.
This blog will never send you away with a 12 point plan and a sticking plaster. This blog believes there is no better way to find lasting contentment in life than talking and sharing and showing people we care desperately about them, their feelings will always matter to us. We may not have received that level of unconditional love in childhood, but as adults we can strive to offer compassion, to ourselves when we need a bit of an internal hug, and to those we share our lives with.
Caring is cool. Love is incredibly cool.
(Clearly I'm never likely to make it to Prime Minister, with a view like that!)
Stories we're bombarded with in the mainstream media, and programmes on our TVs seem to portray a very cynical view of society and encourage us to adopt their harsh assumptions -
- Only beautiful people are worth knowing.
- Ageing is bad.
- People with mental health problems are always a danger to themselves and others.
- The Arts are a complete waste of time and money.
- Women always judge men on the size of their salary (along with that other thing!)
- Most of the people in your local community are to be feared and despised.
- Men always prefer sex to intimacy.
- Each time you take the tube, your life is in danger.
A more honest list of statements would perhaps be -
- Some beautiful people are lovely, some are quite shallow and judge themselves and others only on looks. It's how someone makes you feel that makes them attractive to you, or not.
- Youth is often beautiful to observe, but there is beauty also in the wisdom that can only come out of experience of life, and love.
- Most people in society are a danger to no-one; you're no more likely to be attacked by someone with a mental health condition than by someone who doesn't have one.
- The Arts form part of the fabric of society which give life depth and meaning for many people, they allow us to get in touch with our emotions and promote creative thinking and problem solving skills.
- Most women are more interested in a man's personality, and how he makes her feel, than what he can buy her (or what he's capable of in the sack!)
- Our local communities are full of a wonderful, diverse mix of people, most of whom have integrity and would probably go to someone's aid in an emergency, rather than walk on by.
- Most men don't only want sex from a woman, most respect women as intelligent, funny individuals and enjoy their company in and out of bed. Most men love intimacy and sex without emotions can leave you feeling hollow inside.
- People who take the tube each morning are there to get to work, to pay the bills, to keep their family fed and clothed, just like you.
Now speaking of men and women, love and intimacy, I want to close with this clip from an iconic movie from the 1920s which I fall in love with every time I see it. The direction is simply beautiful, and the acting is incredibly powerful, perhaps even more so because of the lack of spoken words. It would be interesting for men maybe to watch it, and notice how they feel, as we've said before, men can be even more affected by images conveying emotion, than women, due to the way their brains tend to process visual information. Some of you will be familiar with this film, others will not, but it's stunning, and this first clip reflects perfectly the emotional turmoil many couples go through in our society today, when betrayals are revealed, typically, secret love affairs.
Having been seduced by a beautiful femme fatale arriving in his village, the farmer has taken his wife out into the river where he was instructed to throw her overboard and leave her to drown. But the look of total fear in his wife's eyes, as he approaches her to commit this brutal act, shocks him back to reality, leaving him utterly distraught that he could have contemplated hurting this woman, the mother of his child, this beautiful creature he was once in love with.
Here we see a stunning portrayal of pain and betrayal, played out over 10 minutes, a luxury we would never have in modern films. Remarkable acting performances from George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor...
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, directed by F. W. Murnau
And if you want to see, possibly the most adorable 10 minutes of film ever recorded, here's the next part, which conveys perfectly the theory that when we fall in love, we recreate the symbiotic relationship doting parents have with their babies...
Guys, you might need a tissue! :-)xx
Studies earlier in the year concluded reading fiction is good for our mental health. If all this talk of love and attachment has you aching for more, consider giving my first novel a go, which is a somewhat unorthodox story of love, lovers, and complex family dynamics.
You can try a sample for free here! http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Family-Way-ebook/dp/B00ANOHA0G/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1371645195&sr=1-2&keywords=the+family+way
:-)
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