Beyond Fear. Dorothy Rowe
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Название: Beyond Fear
Автор: Dorothy Rowe
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Общая психология
isbn: 9780007369140
isbn:
In finding a practicable balance between being an individual and being a member of a group, you have to arrive at a balance between regarding yourself as
The more we regard ourselves as valueless and imperfect, the more we fear, hate and envy other people, the more we feel frightened of doing anything, and the more we fear the future. Regarding ourselves as bad brings a lot of troubles. Yet if we regard ourselves as perfect we delude ourselves and make it difficult for other people to get along with us. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, get things wrong, irritate other people, and fail to make the most of our talents.
So we have to arrive at a realistic assessment of ourselves, with no false modesty, seeing ourselves as ordinary people, like all other people, yet at the same time as individuals who are valuable to ourselves and to other people, even though other people may not value us in the way that we want them to value us.
It can take us many years to arrive at an assessment of ourselves which provides a realistic and hopeful balance between imperfection and perfection. We can be plagued by doubt, confused by the conflicting demands that people make on us, and hurt by criticism. To find out who we are and how we should assess ourselves we need to explore, to meet new people, to try out new situations and to see how we feel and react to and deal with the strange and the new. But to do this, we need freedom, and to have freedom we have to give up security.
From the moment of our birth, we have to find a balance between
The more freedom we have, the less security. The more security, the less freedom. Total freedom means total uncertainty and great danger. Total security means total certainty and total hopelessness, for hope can only exist where there is uncertainty.
We all try to hold on to a measure of security. Most of us do this by having possessions (what is that line from a song - ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’?), just as most of us find security by keeping close to a group of people (why else would we put up with awful relatives?). Some people seek security not just in possessions and people but in a set of beliefs which makes everything that happens part of a pattern. The pattern may be in terms of heaven and hell, or Allah’s will, or karma, or fate, or a constellation of stars, or the eventual victory of the proletariat, but whatever the pattern is, it gives us a sense of fixity in what would otherwise seem to be a meaningless chaos.
However, while having a belief in some kind of grand design can give a sense of security, it can make the person who holds the belief feel hopeless. If the pattern of your life is already determined by God or by your stars, or by your genes, or by your parents, or by a series of rewards and punishments called conditioning, then there is nothing you can do to change it. You are helpless and hopeless.
On the other hand, if nothing is fixed, if anything can happen, at any time, then you have an infinite number of choices about what you do with your life. Such freedom can be exciting if you have lots of confidence in yourself, but if you do not, then such freedom is very scary. So, somehow, we all have to achieve a balance between
Along with the question of choice comes the question of responsibility. How much are we responsible for what happens? If we are just acting out a pattern which was determined and fixed in our stars or in our genes before we were born, then we are not responsible if we turn out to be murderers or thieves, and it is not our fault if our children turn out badly or millions of people starve. Such a release from responsibility can seem quite attractive, but, equally, if we are not responsible for when things turn out badly, we cannot take the credit for when they turn out well. You cannot take the credit when you become rich, famous and powerful, when your children lead happy, successful lives, and when you solve the problems of world hunger and nuclear war. So, being responsible does have its benefits.
But where does that responsibility end? You might be responsible for doing your work properly but are you responsible when the firm you work for goes bankrupt and you lose your job? You might be responsible for looking after your children, but are you responsible when your daughter’s marriage breaks up or your son gives up his job to go surfing in California? You might be responsible for organizing your finances so that you have some money to give the charities, but are you responsible for those world events which give rise to hunger, terrorism and war?
So we have to find a balance between being
Even though from the moment of birth we need other people, as small children we soon learn that other people can reject and punish us, and this can be very painful. We protect ourselves from this pain by becoming very careful in our relations with other people. We withdraw from them, and when we deal with them we put on some sort of social front. When I was researching for my book Friends and Enemies1 I questioned a large number of people about the part friendship played in their lives. Many of these people spoke of how, while they valued their friends and dreaded loneliness, they feared being rejected or abandoned or betrayed by their friends. Being close to other people is risky, but then we also run the risk of loneliness.
So we have to find a balance between
Thus in these six vital aspects of our lives we are for ever trying to achieve a balance between two opposites. There is no textbook we can consult which will tell us what is the right balance, because what is right for one person is wrong for another. We cannot, when we are, say, fifteen, arrive at a set of balances which will suit us for the rest of our lives and stick with that, because what is a good balance at fifteen is not so good at twenty and quite disastrous at forty. So we have to keep trying to find the right balance, and we always run the risk of getting it wrong. We are always in the position of the juggler who is trying to keep eight oranges in the air while balancing on a ball which is on a chair which is resting on a plank which is supported by two rolling drums which are on a raft floating in deep water. Any minute, something could go wrong. It is no wonder that we often feel frightened.
We struggle on, meeting what seems an endless stream of difficulties and problems. When we encounter yet another setback, we often look at other people and see them being like those people in the television advertisements who are always beautiful, knowledgeable, organized, intelligent, happy, loved, admired and suffering no greater problems than choosing the right margarine and coping with the weather. Then we can feel just like Alice when she met a couple at a dinner party.
‘They’ve got three children,’ she told me, ‘and they’re all brilliant, marvellously musical, getting excellent degrees, entering wonderful careers. He’s done terribly well, she’s got this marvellous part-time job and she’s got paintings in this new exhibition. Everything that family does is just right. Urgh!’
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