Shade and Darkness – 1843. Turner. Wikioo.

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”

Aldous Huxley, Island

 

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing circa 1786 William Blake. Wikimedia Commons.

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”

Rabindranath Tagore

• Acceptance

Life can be serious, painful, distressing and disturbing. Surely we need to struggle against this, recognise the pain, fight it, ‘work’ at getting though the darkness?

Whilst struggling with difficulties does, of course, have its place, sometimes we might consider Huxley’s poetic words of wisdom…. he suggests another way, urging us not to ‘try too hard’ when we are in dark times.

How can we interpret this? My thoughts are that he is counselling us towards acceptance when things are unchangeable, towards ‘letting things happen,’ towards waiting, watching time go by with a patient attitude. He clearly knows that ‘this too will pass.’

Developing acceptance, when things are unchangeable, is an important way of learning to cope with life’s problems.

Rain in Belle-Ile – Claude Monet. 1886. Wikioo.

“The best thing to do when it is raining is to let it rain.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Cultivating an ‘it is what it is’ attitude in the face of difficulties which cannot be altered does not have to be about defeat, or not caring, resignation or shirking responsibility. It can be one of the accepting ways of thinking in an impossible situation.

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

Maya Angelou.

It means we may feel freer – and lighter – to face and move onwards from painful issues.

• Having Feelings/Maintaining Lightness

Huxley rightly recognises that we will have feelings, deep feelings, about a difficult situation, and that these are important, for being in a state of denial only makes things heavier.

Repressing our feelings inevitably causes them to emerge in other ways, perhaps through nightmares, psychosomatic symptoms and psychological illness.

Therapists often feel very deeply, usually being very sensitive people, able to empathise strongly with others’ pain. The downside of this can sometimes be that life is taken too seriously along with the deep feelings. Aldous Huxley reminds us that it is possible to feel deeply, whilst not taking things on too heavily, still maintaining a lightness of attitude.

“What separates courage from fear are the thoughts we choose to believe.”

Charles F. Glassman.

This may sound like a tall order, and I guess it is! However, it is something to aim for…. not overreacting and keeping things in perspective.

Relevant to therapy also is the idea of having a light touch. This means that we do not go into the work of therapy with heavy boots, confronting too boldly or intrusively. It is also relevant to art, music and dance. In addition, the idea of a gentle and measured touch applies to the whole concept of leadership.

“He who has great power should use it lightly.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Even when we face the prospect of death, Huxley is nevertheless still telling us to ‘go lightly.’ Again, this is a far from easy approach, but if we make ‘heavy weather’ of things, we may end up exhausted, worn out with the effort of fighting the unchangeable.

Edvard Munch – The Angel of Death.1893. Wikimedia Commons.

“I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.”

C. S. Lewis

The ‘best advice,’ says Huxley was ‘lightly, lightly,’ which he especially needed in the past, when he was so serious. When we are confronted with death, he recommends ‘nothing ponderous,’ but ‘just the fact of dying and the fact of clear light.’

This accepting attitude will necessarily involve coming to terms with our own mortality and the fact of our inevitable death, the only certainty in life. Unless we do, we cannot have a happy life, so worried will we be about its ending.

This approach concurs with the psychoanalyst Irvin Yalom’s view:

“…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.”

Irvin D. Yalom

“Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!”

Irvin D. Yalom

If we spend out lives worrying too much about the big, heavy issues, we will have no space to see the joy and wonder of the world. There are so many painful events and experiences in our lives, that focussing on misery all the time is like being pulled into quicksands ‘trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.’ 

Quicksand warning. Wikimedia Commons.

Some things are, indeed, truly awful, and Huxley is not suggesting that we should minimise our own or others’ pain. What he is saying is that we should try not to make situations heavier than they are.

“Everything hinges on how you look at things.”

Henry Miller.

Are you someone who makes mountains out of molehills, who catastrophises? If so, whether things are trivial or really tough, life will be even darker than it needs to be and there will be no space to think, contemplate, work through or reflect.

Strep72.  A Mountain out of a Mole Hill. Flickr.

“The difference between a mountain and a molehill is perspective.”

Al Neuharth.

Estaque, winding road – c. 1906. André Derain. Wikioo.

“Life’s journey is peppered with many bumps and pitfalls. If we make mountains out of each one, we will get nowhere.”

Charles F. Glassman.

• Humour.

Humour can also lighten our lives, even in dark times. Huxley describes himself when younger as a ‘humourless little prig,’ implying that humour can go a long way in terms of lightening our ways of thinking. Even a short few moments of  ‘comic relief’ can provide a little welcome respite when life gets tough. 

Below are some further images and quotations relevant to taking life more lightly: 

The Laughing Woman (study) – Graham Vivian Sutherland. Wikioo

“Comedy is not the opposite of darkness, but its natural bedfellow. Pain makes laughter necessary; laughter makes pain tolerable.”

Mindy Greenstein

Gustave Courbet, The Desperate Man, 1843–45. Wikimedia Commons.

“It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.”

Betty White

We Are Crazy – Georges Rouault. Wikioo.

“Taking crazy things seriously is a serious
waste of time.”

Haruki Murakami

• “So throw away your baggage and go forward…”

Walking Man Carrying a Bag. Theo van Doesburg. Wikimedia Commons.

‘Throwing away our baggage’ is a lovely thought, although it is not quite as easy as merely dumping our heavy load down the rubbish chute.

Becoming free from our ‘baggage’ can be a lengthy and painful process. What does ‘baggage’ mean in this sense? The word is used in a metaphorical way, referring to the store of unworked through emotions that often can lie unresolved in our unconscious mind, affecting our feelings, our ways of seeing the world, our mood and behaviour.

Self-criticism, fears and phobias, anxiety, relationship difficulties, problems at work, and many other life issues can occur from our ‘baggage.’ Many of these need to be recognised, understood and worked on, in order that they do not rule our lives. Then they can be dumped or ‘recycled’ into more productive behaviour.

• Recycling…. and Therapy

Pablo Picasso, 1942, Tête de taureau (Bull’s Head), bicycle seat and handlebars, Wikimedia Commons.

Picasso had the imagination to look at an old bicycle and envision something new and different. He transformed it.

Psychotherapy certainly involves a kind of emotional recycling, a re-envisioning of what is already there. Can we take aspects of our past that have become redundant to us and transform them into something useful?

The most frequent example of this process in relation to therapy is when we are able to gain insight from past experiences, perhaps transforming them into something that will be helpful now, rather than destructive. This involves taking a different view, developing a new perspective on outmoded material within ourselves.

One of my patients, Jim,  a man in his twenties, was haunted by the fact that whenever he fell in love, he also tended to get very hurt and badly treated. It took time for him to realise that, because he was physically abused as a child by a parent who also said they loved him, he had these two feelings- love and abuse- confused.

He unconsciously connected the two, so that he could not have one without the other. In addition, he was choosing lovers with similar unconscious agendas. The old and useless patterns of behaviour needed refreshing, throwing away some parts and developing others, just as Picasso did; he discarded the wheels of the bike, amongst other parts, and kept the productive aspects for his new creation.

‘Recycling’ for Jim involved making something new out of old parts of himself, seeing an old situation with new eyes, getting rid of the destructive ‘need’ for abuse, (Picasso’s bike wheels) but keeping the love (Picasso’s saddle and handlebars.) Adding to this fresh perspective, he developed the awareness and insight to look for partners who were not abusive. (This also involved exploring the abusive parts of himself, projected onto the other.)

Imagination

Imagination – Friedrich Julius Oskar Blümner. 1933. Wikioo.

“In times of crisis, it’s wonderful what the imagination will do.”

Ruskin Bond

Using our imagination can help us take things more lightly in difficult times. It can temporarily move us out of the present, away from the past, and into an imagined future. It can give us wings, making us light as air, transporting us to any time and any place we want.

The Path through the Irises. Monet 1914. Wikimedia Commons.

“The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.”

Terence McKenna

Love

Edvard Munch – Cupid and Psyche (1907) Wikimedia Commons.

“Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us.”

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The quotation above contains much wisdom; it really is a key to understanding what is important in life. Love is what Huxley has for the ‘darling’ child he addresses in his poem, urging her to walk lightly through life.

We all need to love and feel loved, to enable us to live with a gentle touch, to tread softly and mindfully, and to travel light when we leave the world.

“I see people teaching how to make an impact, but I don’t want to make dents, I want to walk lightly on the earth, grateful for universal grace.”

Jay Woodman

© Linda Berman.