1. Painful. Dealt w/ a suicidal 6 y/o boy this week. Horrible situation, as you can well imagine. Tragedy all around.
2. Dropping out of music (mainly conducting) & musicology. I don't regret my current work -- it's quite rewarding & worthwhile. But I truly miss the music deep in my heart.
3. My psychotherapy group is disbanding, which is going to cause some real disruption, and probably a bit of financial hardship for the next 6 mos to a year. Mainly due to a colleague we should never had included 6 yrs ago. (Hindsight.) Borderline personality disorder -- raving. Extremely hard to deal w/. (And I treat them, but treating them, and having one a colleague is very different.)
4. I meet injustice, horrible injustice many times each day. Today? Abuse being raised in an alcoholic family; current trauma & neglect from the medical system, not understanding that client is dually diagnosed, both Asperger's & seizures; horrible abuse & abandonment by biological parents. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. Past & on-going injustice is constant. It's especially hard when it's on-going, and it involves children, or when the effects on those children are to prevent them from believing themselves lovable or trusting others' love.
5. See above. Abuse & neglect are evil. That's constant. Addiction is evil. That's constant, too. Hate & human disinterest, that's also evil. Again, all the time, every day at work. I could go on, but again, I suspect you get the idea.
6. No. I'm trying, very hard, not to go there when I'm dealing w/ politicians in a democratic society. Not that there aren't evil public figures, present & past. Totalitarianism is always evil, as are torture, murder, genocide, terrorism, racism, and many other horrors. And I would also say that any politician, who trucks w/ hate & woeful unconcern is, indeed, trucking w/ evil. So I can't exclude politicians in democratic countries. But I'm trying, hard, to understand, even if it's clear that I don't agree, and won't ever agree. The key, too, for me, is not to get caught, myself, in hate, or in twin swamps that can so easily drag one into evil, though in different ways -- dogmatism & relativism. Fighting evil w/ evil -- which, of course, war is -- is sometimes necessary, even honorable. But I'm trying not to add hate, and to always include some form of understanding. I'm certainly not always successful; sometimes I'm not often successful. But I'm trying. And how evil is struggled against is desperately important. For example, my father was on Iwo Jima in WWII. Every boy in his platoon was either killed or wounded. On the first day, he drew his rifle away from killing his first-sighted Japanese soldier b/c, as he said, "It was so outrageous -- killing another human being." Within 2 wks, he was crawling ahead of the lines w/ his lieutenant, knifing sleeping Japanese in their foxholes, so his buddies would have a better chance to survive. Quite a transformation. But he didn't, as some of his fellow marines -- and they were all just boys, none of them over 22 -- did -- kill the few Japanese who tried to surrender. That, for dad, was, I believe, a real moral victory, and an example of what I mean. I have a lot of respect for him, not just what he did & what he had to go through, but how he did it.
7 & 8. I can't answer these questions. Literally, nothing comes to mind.
Oh, dear. I'm rambling on, and have to go to another post.
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Date: 2005-07-31 05:25 am (UTC)2. Dropping out of music (mainly conducting) & musicology. I don't regret my current work -- it's quite rewarding & worthwhile. But I truly miss the music deep in my heart.
3. My psychotherapy group is disbanding, which is going to cause some real disruption, and probably a bit of financial hardship for the next 6 mos to a year. Mainly due to a colleague we should never had included 6 yrs ago. (Hindsight.) Borderline personality disorder -- raving. Extremely hard to deal w/. (And I treat them, but treating them, and having one a colleague is very different.)
4. I meet injustice, horrible injustice many times each day. Today? Abuse being raised in an alcoholic family; current trauma & neglect from the medical system, not understanding that client is dually diagnosed, both Asperger's & seizures; horrible abuse & abandonment by biological parents. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. Past & on-going injustice is constant. It's especially hard when it's on-going, and it involves children, or when the effects on those children are to prevent them from believing themselves lovable or trusting others' love.
5. See above. Abuse & neglect are evil. That's constant. Addiction is evil. That's constant, too. Hate & human disinterest, that's also evil. Again, all the time, every day at work. I could go on, but again, I suspect you get the idea.
6. No. I'm trying, very hard, not to go there when I'm dealing w/ politicians in a democratic society. Not that there aren't evil public figures, present & past. Totalitarianism is always evil, as are torture, murder, genocide, terrorism, racism, and many other horrors. And I would also say that any politician, who trucks w/ hate & woeful unconcern is, indeed, trucking w/ evil. So I can't exclude politicians in democratic countries. But I'm trying, hard, to understand, even if it's clear that I don't agree, and won't ever agree. The key, too, for me, is not to get caught, myself, in hate, or in twin swamps that can so easily drag one into evil, though in different ways -- dogmatism & relativism. Fighting evil w/ evil -- which, of course, war is -- is sometimes necessary, even honorable. But I'm trying not to add hate, and to always include some form of understanding. I'm certainly not always successful; sometimes I'm not often successful. But I'm trying. And how evil is struggled against is desperately important. For example, my father was on Iwo Jima in WWII. Every boy in his platoon was either killed or wounded. On the first day, he drew his rifle away from killing his first-sighted Japanese soldier b/c, as he said, "It was so outrageous -- killing another human being." Within 2 wks, he was crawling ahead of the lines w/ his lieutenant, knifing sleeping Japanese in their foxholes, so his buddies would have a better chance to survive. Quite a transformation. But he didn't, as some of his fellow marines -- and they were all just boys, none of them over 22 -- did -- kill the few Japanese who tried to surrender. That, for dad, was, I believe, a real moral victory, and an example of what I mean. I have a lot of respect for him, not just what he did & what he had to go through, but how he did it.
7 & 8. I can't answer these questions. Literally, nothing comes to mind.
Oh, dear. I'm rambling on, and have to go to another post.