Dearest Moonie-Sweet,
Thank goodness for your messages . . .they brighten my day . . .I am happily over-working plus I GOT PROMOTED!
I have an idea here, a friend who spent long months in therapy as an aging N, told me that he thinks that in cases like his own,
the aging process helped him . .. he describes it as "aging out" of narcissicism. The body and psyche gets to tired to keep all that disturbance going.
It isn't true in all cases but perhaps in a mild case, life experience mitigates and as he has told me, provides a painful but instructive lesson.
My "recovered" N friend still has some symptoms, he freely admits, but he is proud that he has learned to empathize and relate to many people emotionally
in a way that he was unable to in the past.
My point is and here is the mystery I contemplate . .. Love is a spiritual attribute, a condition of the soul, something i believe we all contain . . .
If this is true, then all human beings are at least capable of some form of love.
Remember Orson Welles and the movie, "Citizen Kane" . . . ?
The bloated overweening character (modeled on multi-millionaire Randolph Hearst) gasps with his dying breath . . .
the word . . ."Rosebud." The characters in the film who survive Kane are baffled because they don't know who
or what "Rosebud" is . . .only the person watching the movie truly knows that Rosebud, the last thing on earth truly loved by Kane is . . .well,
A SLED . . .with the word "Rosebud" painted as a brand name on it.
Sometimes people with emotional trauma never grow (emotionally) past the age of their wound.
"Citizen Kane" tell us on his deathbed precisely when he was wounded . . . by whispering the name of the last pitiful object
he was able to freely love . . .
My point is, a disabling wound like that happens in early childhood, before conscience and awareness are fully developed. . .
hence the lack of awareness, the lack of empathy, the emotional shallowness . . .
Only self-preservation survives, at all costs . . .
What a terrible wound! What a tragic loss!
Yet I think, there is hope . . .we don't expect sick people to perform like athletes,
should we expect the emotionally crippled amongst us to embody
what they are incapable of perceiving? Naturally, ther is no excuse for unlawful behavior.
A hard question . . .something i could not have asked myself 10 or 15 years ago . . .
I would love to hear some other thoughts on this . . .especially yours,
Moonlight
Love and Regards,
Sheela