LOOKING THROUGH THE LENS THE OTHER WAY

Recently, I listened again to a New Dimensions Radio interview with James Hillman, the late American psychologist, and Michael Ventura, with whom he had collaborated on a book about certain shortcomings in psychotherapy. The former raised a point that I find really interesting.

Relating the story of a famous bullfighter who had been particularly meek as a child, Hillman said that such a career choice would typically be viewed as a form of compensation. But what if the boy had known all along, albeit unconsciously, that he would one day be facing raging bulls under the gaze of a frenzied crowd? Wouldn’t that go some way towards explaining his childhood behaviour?

Of course, this is only an idea, a matter of perceiving things, and it can't be proven or falsified. But I’d contest that our perception of the world, of our lives, is of paramount importance. One person’s suffering is another’s striving, your terrorist is my freedom fighter, the delightful rain that feeds your garden is the bloody rain that keeps me from drying my laundry.

I find Hillman’s suggestion quite liberating, since instead of looking at our present state as the cumulative result of past events, we can see it as a necessary stage in the process of becoming. In this way, those wounds and shamings received and inflicted, those regrettable choices and actions, those bones of contention, lose a good deal of their sting. They can be seen as reasonable, perhaps even rational, within the context of eventual blossoming.

For me, this isn’t necessarily a case of letting myself or others off the hook for what happened in the past. And neither is it about accepting my fate, whatever it may be, and just going through life on autopilot. But it definitely offers a new perspective and might help to take the bitterness out of certain things that have bothered us for years. And for that, I believe, Mr Hillman, deserves a round of applause.