What the world needs now
Is love, sweet love.
That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
— Jackie De Shannon
I remind myself daily of my incredible good fortune to live in a time when I don’t have to fear the Mongol hordes putting us to the sword, or having to go to the weekly witch dunking, (If she drowns, she’s innocent, if she survives, she’s a witch and will be put to death!) And yet….
I was once working with a client, a very conservative investment banker with chronic back pain. He would always show up in his suit, and the most he was willing to let go of was to take off his tie and jacket for our lesson. The idea of wearing sweat pants or even taking off his shoes was beyond comprehension. He sat up at the end of one lesson.
“I don’t get it. Why do I feel better after working with you, when it feels like you’ve done almost nothing? And why won’t it last?” I suggested that he might want to try some movement practice on his own. Maybe take some time to meditate, or visualize himself moving freely. He looked at me in disbelief. “You sound like some kind of old hippy. Like those people who rode around in VW buses.”
I actually did have a VW bus, but it was not nearly as hip as he described. I do remember driving it to Valley Forge over fifty years ago, where I joined thousands of anti-war protestors listening to Jane Fonda, swaying together singing “Give Peace a Chance,” in a cloud of pot smoke. I can’t remember a thing Fonda said, because this incredibly cute guy next to me gave me an embroidered headband and told me I was beautiful. It was the first time anyone had ever said that to me and for a moment I felt all the love and hope one can have for the world. Surely we hippy protesters would change the world!
Yet here we are: troops at the border (pick a border, any border!), drone attacks, a pandemic, economic instability. Perhaps it’s always been this way, progress and turmoil, like Dickens’ famous line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Your head could spin at the contradictions: beauty, hope, evil, greed, and of course, love and hate.
Maybe we can find a middle ground. Feldenkrais often said that having one choice is no choice at all. To be caught between two choices: Democrat/Republican, Vax/anti-vax, good/bad is a dilemma. How can we begin to find the third option? Call it the middle way. Or as Gurdjieff called it, the neutralizing or reconciling force. If I look for the midline in myself, what Feldenkrais Trainer Jeff Haller often calls, “what is neither right nor left,” is it possible to see possibility? Perhaps if we could reconcile our contradictions through movement, we could experience that centered place that evokes love for all.
It’s always been my dream to be called to Congress and to invite the members to turn slowly to the LEFT and then slowly to the RIGHT and then sense the MIDDLE. Just imagine if we could get at least a few members to try this lesson. Perhaps if we all do it with a wish to love ourselves, we can change the world :-). I know Valentine’s Day is just a Hallmark holiday, but maybe this month, we can give the world, and ourselves, a little love. All I am saying…is give peace a chance.