My patient was telling me about his new job.
On the face of things, there was nothing to complain about. He’d hated his old firm — a Biglaw institution that he called “soulless.” The new place, a New York City-based securities boutique, was different. The people were smart – practically cosmopolitan by comparison. And for the first time, he wasn’t being treated like a junior. They respected his judgment – no one was correcting his work.
I offered congratulations.
He looked thoughtful, and I asked what was wrong.
“This is going to sound crazy.”
“Crazy is my business. Try me.”
“I didn’t want to get this job. I was hoping the old place would fire me.”
“Okay. Why?”
“I wanted to be free.”
He’d gone so far in pursuit of his secret fantasy of getting fired that he’d planned a trip to India and investigated moving to Oregon, where an old friend lives. He had money saved up, and was ready to apply for unemployment and sell his apartment. It was all worked out. He was going to escape – to chase a dream of living near the mountains and surrounding himself with laid-back, creative people.
Now – by a stroke of luck – he was sitting in another big city law firm, earning a large salary, continuing with his career.
He had nothing to complain about – but he was crushed.
The problem was simple. He was going nowhere – or, at least, nowhere he wanted to be.
This guy could stick around at this firm for twenty years and end up a senior securities attorney – maybe even a partner. He’d be wealthy. He’d attend bar association thingamabobs and sit on panels. He’d have his own clients and bring in business. That was where he was headed if he stayed on his current track, passively charting the course of least resistance.
But he didn’t want any of that. He didn’t like securities law. He didn’t really like law, period. He just fell into it because he needed something to do and stayed for the money.
Now he sat in my office, crying – talking about what might have been.
“My friend owns a restaurant, in Oregon, on an old wharf. They specialize in organic, locally-grown food. I was going to move to Oregon and manage the place for him. I wouldn’t earn much, but my friend says I have the personality and the talent to run a restaurant. And I love Oregon – living near the forest and the sea.”
I asked him what was stopping him from quitting right now to pursue his dream.
“I’d never have the balls. I couldn’t give up this money.”
“Not even for your dream?”
He shook his head. That was that. It was decided.
Stasis is a trap between anger and fear. Anger that you aren’t living the life you want. Fear that if you let go, you’ll lose everything.
I am happy to admit I do not know what lies at the farthest reaches of outer space, I do not know what happens after I die, and I do not know how long my relationship with my partner will last.
For example, we live out our lives stuck to a round ball of rock by a mysterious force known as gravity. If we keep traveling in any direction, we end up back where we began. Just like your childhood neighborhood, that reality might feel safe and normal. But simply because the Earth is designed that way doesn’t mean the universe is – space may well continue on forever. Yes – without end. Forever.
One of my fond memories of attending Harvard University was studying with Stephen Jay Gould, the brilliant paleontologist. Gould’s specialty was blowing his students’ minds by reminding them that their assumptions might not be generalizable to every situation. He gave a lecture on how things would look if you were only a quarter inch – or 40 feet – tall. My assumption – like a child’s – was that things would be pretty much the way they are now, except I’d be smaller or I’d be larger – essentially I’d be looking up at stuff or gazing down at it, but that would be that.
As a child, relationships were supposed to last forever. Mommy and Daddy – the two relationships that mattered above all else – were necessary for your survival, and you took it as a matter of faith that they had to be there or you would perish.
A reader wrote recently to ask about the effect of multiple moves on a child.
The word resonates so strongly that real estate listings often use “home” instead of “house” to describe a property for sale. They’d rather market a concept – something we all long for – than the thing itself, a heap of wood and brick, cinder block and glass.
As a child, you long for stability – a regular schedule, predictable places and events. A child savors routines that would bore an adult to tears: watching the same dvd over and over again, having the same book read to him over and over again, eating the same meal (chicken nuggets or pizza) over and over again. A child wants to stay put and feel safe. Familiarity is like food – he gobbles it up.
So you turn vagabond – and search for a new home, elsewhere.
You cannot build a home with someone else until you feel secure in yourself. No other person can make you feel secure in your life, and partners cannot run to one another for something they both lack.
Always there, always ready to offer love, security and safety. For yourself.
In Lennon’s case, it isn’t difficult to see the basis for the pattern. All Lennon fans know the familiar facts:
The pattern is hard to miss: abandonment to nurturing to abandonment – back and forth and back and forth. Lennon lost his father, but had his mother. Then lost his mother. Then had his mother again. Then lost her again. She adored him, but couldn’t keep him – so back he went to Aunt Mimi. Then she adored him again, but died suddenly, leaving him utterly bereft and as afraid to trust love in any form as he longed for the love he’d once cherished.
The borderline pattern is usually handed from parent to child. The parent exhibits this switch from one extreme to the other, and the child, attempting to adapt in response, begins to gyrate, too. In Lennon’s case, the events of his childhood were extreme, involving actual abandonment and the sudden death of a parent – so his pattern was particularly pronounced. By all accounts, John could be a very difficult person to deal with. His son Julian makes that clear in describing his few memories of his father, and even Sean, who barely knew his father, described him as having a strong temper and behaving unpredictably – affectionate sometimes, cruel and angry at others. The man who wrote “All You Need is Love” was indeed warm and loving and sincere and idealistic. He could also be vicious. That was the fearful child in John, fighting, unconsciously, to survive in a world fraught with the peril of abandonment and betrayal.
If I worked with John Lennon, I would seek meticulously to be the same stable object each and every time he saw me. I would let him know I welcomed his anger just as I welcomed all his emotions, so long as he put everything into words instead of going into action on unexplored feeling. I would make certain he never received a response from me other than acceptance and support. The goal at all times would be to flatten out the gyrations – to offer a Middle Path, the path of the Buddha, the path of moderation.
I would make sure Lennon knew I wasn’t like the people in his childhood. I would be there, the same old People’s Therapist, each and every time – offering support and understanding.
The People's Therapist 