Living in paradise

A friend of mine admitted recently to feeling low, as if melancholia had suddenly descended on him. This was contrary to his usual self, because since sobering up, my friend had developed a positive attitude - seeing the good and the best in every situation and circumstance.

Knowing that my friend was an actor, I suggested to him what might have caused his sudden bout of depression – it was the end of a busy period for him, with a long-running successful TV series, which he had been involved with for over seven years, coming to an end. I suggested that unwittingly he might be grieving its loss.

Acting is a precarious business (I should know I was in the profession for forty years). One goes from job to job, and is dependent for work on another person’s good will. Working on a long-term project, therefore - as my friend had been for over seven years - is the exception; as well, of course, as being a privilege. “Perhaps indeed,” he later admitted to me over a coffee, “that I have been grieving the series’ loss - and fretting about an uncertain future. Because I’ve been feeling recently as if I’m grieving over something or other – feeling tearful, yes, but unable to cry for some reason.”

We talked about how unresolved, suppressed feelings can cause melancholia – unresolved, in my friend’s case, until I drew his attention to them. Once he gave himself permission to feel these feelings, however, he was able to move on – and today, miraculously, the depression has lifted.

But the key that facilitated the miracle was the fact that we were both able to sit down and have an honest exchange; that I was able to be open with him; and him with me.

Unresolved and suppressed feelings, I believe, are responsible for road rage and other examples of social misbehaviours and unrest – crime, the crowd troubles and the lack of respect we hear so much about these days and, of course, addictions.

More and more individuals loose the ability to be honest emotionally with each other. The way I relieved the inevitable tension and stress that ensued when I was drinking, was to disappear inside a bottle of booze (I had found a short-cut to make myself feel better). Increasingly people are using this same method as well – and other drugs and addictive behaviours.

But it’s revealed, in the main, through violent behaviour in our society, crime and social unrest. The inability to communicate at every level is responsible. Man has isolated himself from his fellow man - like a pelican he refuses (or is unable) to share in any depth his emotions with the next man.

Anarchy and the ‘burden of unbearable aloneness’ is its inevitable end; it’s impossible to legislate against and our only hope of salvation is spiritual intervention: that means man coming to terms with himself, incidentally – realising his true worth and learning to respect him or herself. Respect for his fellow-man (and for public order) stems from that.

I’m convinced that if people were able to be honest and open with their feelings criminality would be reduced dramatically overnight, and respect would return to our society, as would sobriety. We would live a life of bliss I’m convinced. To live in this country would indeed, then, be to live in paradise.