📅 Thought for today:
‘Death twitches my ear;
“Live,” he says…
“I’m coming.”‘
— Virgil
#thoughtfortoday #death #dying #living #therapist #birthday #curious #curiosity
I know death on a Sunday morning is not going to be what everyone wants to hear me thinking about.
As a therapist, death comes up in conversation more than it does in general. More than it does at birthday parties, for instance.
Fear of dying, awareness of dying and avoiding death all motivate people in different ways.
Some rush to do the most before their time is up.
And others stop trying far too soon.
We went to a friend’s birthday party in a lovely little Oxfordshire village yesterday.
We hardly knew anyone, so chatted to the people around us.
One lady stays in my mind, she is in her early 60s, very outgoing.
She describes how she has bought a new piece of furniture and said to herself as she did, “This will probably be the last sofa I buy”.
I wondered whether this was pragmatism (after all, it might be); fatalism (maybe she knows something we don’t); or depression (she has given up on life)? Or maybe something else.
There was something there in this statement, in the way she said it and the look on her face – a flicker in the eyes, a sigh.
Yet this was a birthday party, I am not a therapist here, I’m a guest, and it is not my place to be inquisitive and intrude.
Curiosity comes with the profession though, as a therapist mentor once said to me, “To be a good therapist you need to be nosy!”
Twelve hours later I am still curious.
