I had a colleague during my training who after seeing a client for therapy would trot out of the room nodding her head slowly, contentedly and reassuringly saying, "there's movement, as long as there is movement, its good".(1).In order to fulfil our lives we are required to live our lives, actively engage and do what we have to do (each of us) in the world to activate our potential, to become the 'flower' that we are; our own distinctive coming out.In engaging with life we have to be open, we have to learn, we have to grow and leave simpler explanations behind.We have to get used to complex explanations, ones that are less black and white.We have to accept responsibility, we have to cope and endure in a world that at the most is benignly indifferent to us.We have to make decisions and commit to them.Commingled with all of the above tasks we have the opportunity to live, love and perhaps experience fulfilment and happiness as a by-product of our efforts.If we don't do the things that we have to do the mathematical possibility and likelihood of experiencing fulfilment and happiness are diminished.Happiness is a derivative of our efforts, it is epiphenomenal, a secondary phenomenon resulting from another, in this case the activated and engaged living and achieving of developmental and other tasks.For some of us this seemingly straightforward process is a substantial challenge.All the things we have to do not only tender us the possibility of fulfilment and perhaps happiness but they simultaneously potentially put us in harm's way.We are beings who struggle with the experience and regulation of elemental emotional distress and pain.If this were not so, therapeutic change in a person would constitute a simple reprogramming of our cognitions and behaviours; changing the on and off binary command processes.Perhaps our greatest ingenuity is epitomised by the things we do to not experience pain, to protect our soft (creamy orange) chocolate centres.Life and the experience of life is not the same for all people, as I say recurrently.Yet in practice we each have to do fairly much the same general things.It's in the detail that we each find our personal quest; our individual coming out.I suppose the challenge is to ascertain what it is we each have to do (over and above the common tasks we share with everybody) and then find 'my' way to do what 'I' have to do.Sounds straightforward and for some perhaps it is.It might be helpful if each of us had the courage, imagination, and wisdom to create a list, a list that outlined those things that put us at risk and those things that protect us in the journey of life.This list might help us prepare ourselves for the tasks and challenges ahead, almost like a user's guide to oneself.Let me give an example of what I am suggesting.Bobby (someone I used to talk with) still lived at home with her parents as she closed in on her thirtieth birthday.Her life was about two feelings; shame at her situation, her lack of movement and advancement and anger at the way she saw other people engaged with the world, living, and growing.Anger directed towards them and towards herself.She watched as she saw other people living as she wished she could live, to have a love partner, to go out and socialise, to have a job, earn a living and have a sense of ordinary belonging.Bobby was not without self-understanding, she had a grasp of what she needed to do; find a way to support herself financially, leave her parents' home, connect with people and handle each day as it came, being just another ordinary person living her life.She had always been a highly sensitive person, it seemed to be her nature.Now this made it harder for her as she avoided situations that she knew would leave her possibly feeling hurt or rejected.It also made it better for her; with her sensitivity and natural empathic ability she could easily connect with another person (whom she felt safe with) in a one-on-one encounter.She had struggled at school with learning and other difficulties that made educational achievement very hard.This had left her self-esteem a bit battered with a sense of shame.As much as she wanted to socialise; and she had more than enough opportunities, she shied away from being with 'successful people' as this made her face red and hot and her body sweaty, she was already self-conscious enough.Because of her school experiences she was pessimistic, not believing that she could succeed or master the challenges she had to face like studying, training further, or seeking a job.She felt that her parents were distant, irritated, and just keen for her to leave home.She struggled to trust people but was very attached to her grandmother whom she adored.Her granny knew her inside and out, and believed in her even when she didn't believe in herself.Over the years spending lots of time alone she had pursued a number of interests that did not derive income.She had a well-developed eye and an aesthetic sense that made photography quite easy for her.She loved and knew a great deal about choral music; she so wanted to join a choir, any choir.Up to now she had found inventive ways to not do the stuff she had to do to at least have a chance of getting what she desired.She had perfected her capacity for wishful thinking.She had concluded that the pain of trying to do was harder to bear than the pain of feeling shame and anger.She gave her fear full dominion in her personal realm.She patiently waited for divine intervention and she held steadfastly onto her faith in spiritual transcendence.Some might say that she was spiritually bypassing.Interesting terminology, sounds like a highway flyover that cuts around having to pass through a busy and congested but interesting city; would you want to bypass New York? Buffalo is great but New York! (2).She had faith and hope but to be fair, remembered that even if you have the gift of God in your life; you still have to live your life, do your life day-to-day even in the certainty of the Kingdom of Heaven to come.She had never used drugs or alcohol to anaesthetize herself, no-one in the family had done that.Bobby had discipline, she had learned diligently every day to master her camera.She was so skilled that she could easily teach a beginners course, strangely that prospect didn't scare her at all.With so much time on her hands she volunteered a lot at the old-age home.It distressed her to see people alone, people whose children had moved away and hardly ever saw them, unable to look after themselves.This left Bobby morally furious but equally determined to spend as much time as she could in helping the elderly enjoy their lives.She sometimes sang for them, felt connected to and valued by them.They loved it when she sang excerpts from Handel's' Hallelujah chorus.It was her thirtieth birthday soon, her frustration was growing.Almost not noticing it she experienced a growing realisation and acceptance that she couldn't be like other people; there were certain things she couldn't do and certain things she didn't want to do, things that weren't her.She came to accept that she couldn't trust some people and that was just what it was, no more no less.Her parents told her that they were planning on selling their house and moving into a smaller flat with no room for her.She panicked but only for a short while.Against all the odds she felt a slither of humour, a smile in her mind but not yet on her lips.Perhaps she was ready to try to do what she had to do even if she went scarlet and sweated in gallons.She was beginning to imagine that she might survive engaging with life after all.There were things that could put her at risk; make doing life harder for her and there were things that could protect her; make doing life easier for her.Interestingly it is not immediately obvious which the risk factors are and which the protective factors are.Is being angry, sensitive or a wishful thinker a risk factor or a protective factor?What is the way we do what we have to do? We do it with as much self-knowledge as we can muster, with courage and humility usually not knowing what the outcome is likely to be, one step at a time, as Martin Buber suggests.".This way is indeed like a road, but not a road that one walks upon.It is a road that one is in the act of constructing.Laboriously you roll the stones into place.You press them down.With much effort you roll the next one into place.You press it down and with great difficulty you smooth the tops, fill in the spaces in between, and level it off so that it can be walked upon.You do it one stone at a time and after a while you find that you have moved several yards forward.Working, you have been on the way.The road has come into being beneath your feet." (3).Bobby spoke with me recently saying, "I've worked really hard on myself to get to this point I'm not going to give that up now.I spent years acquiescing in case I should be rejected so I tolerated and put up with things that were not good for me.I have spent a long time working to understand who I am, now I do, and the only rejection that scares me is the one where I turn away from myself.I'm not saying it is any easier but I feel less powerless inside".A brick wall can be a gate if we see it; that is what a miracle is, that what you think is one thing can in fact be a different thing.REFERENCES 1.Title with acknowledgements to Massive Attack; Teardrop lyrics Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.2.Buber, M.(1958) For the Sake of Heaven, New York. Meridian.3.Welwood, J.Human Nature, Buddha Nature New! Spiritual Bypassing, Relationship, and the Dharma, http.//www.Johnwelwood.Com/articlesandinterviews.Htm.
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