Saturday, 02 February 2013 00:00

Make it so, Mr Riker

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If you’re not an old Trekkie (yes, I confess) that phrase will mean nothing to you. It was the command that made things happen on the Starship Enterprise and sometimes it runs through my head when I am trying to control my future. Generally I have found that, unlike the starship, my future does not swing round into the direction I have planned for it to go in. It seems there is a different plan and I am not in charge of it…or am I?

Have you noticed how some folks (maybe even you, my reader) keep taking themselves into the same life situation? They’ve met a new partner, say, and this time it’s going to be different because they reckon they know all the signs – of the controller, of the needy one, of the abuser. But amazingly they find themselves in a sickeningly familiar situation. The configuration might be a little different but eventually all the feelings of diminishment, resentment, even fear, are there again. What happened? Is this some kind of doom, written in the stars?

There are the seemingly lucky ones who already know how to pick the right life situation, the right partner, and aside from some minor difficulties they go on and live the enviable life. There are others who get it wrong once, maybe twice, maybe even a few times…but their choice improves each time as they gain more knowledge and utilise that to inform their search.

So how come some people never learn? Are they just unlucky? Or might it be that there are things about these situations, these partnerships that somehow attract them? Maybe they even create them. Maybe they “make it so”.

The unconscious (some people call it the subconscious) is difficult to describe. Various theorists have thought about it in slightly different ways. Here, I am writing of it as a part of you that exists but that you don’t know about. However it is active in your life. Some of you might call it your shadow.

The unconscious contains a lot of memories and ideas: maybe from the pre-verbal part of your life when you did your primary learning about relationships, maybe from a later time when you didn’t want to know about these memories or ideas and so you shoved them into a dark place, far back on the shelf, somewhere in the library that is your mind, your wonderful powerful mind. The problem is that if those memories and ideas are held in the dark, they cannot be examined. And it may be that some of them need to be challenged. They have become surplus to requirements.

If it’s time to make the journey into that so near but so distant part of yourself, if you want to examine why you constantly bring yourself to a destination that is all too distressingly familiar, you will probably need to do it in the company of another. It’s a journey that seems to need a crew of two, with your companion sitting in a place that commands a different view. This second person also has to be someone who is not afraid to name the un-nameable, who is not afraid to stay with you when the light of the stars seems to fail, who may at times challenge you.
When you’re ready, come on board. The starship awaits.

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