The Echo – Georges Pierre Seurat. Wikioo.

“Life is an echo. What you send out, comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you. Remember, life is an echo. It always gets back to you. So give goodness.”

Unknown

The world is full of echoes. Listen…

Sounds, music, emotions, voices, words and deeds constantly reverberate, resonate and pulsate around us and the universe, producing a subtle, dynamic energy that swirls and ripples through the airwaves.

If we listen, and develop our sensitivities, then we may hear and experience these echoes, and learn from their wisdom.

• What you send out will often come back to you

Van Gogh – Starry Night. 1889.Wikimedia Commons.

“Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever.”

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Such energy emanates from us all, from inside ourselves… and then out, out, out into the world around us. Subsequently, like an echo, this vital energy will somehow return to us.

It may not come back immediately, or in the form we know and expect. The return may be huge, powerful and dynamic, or  it may be subtle, vague, indistinct; in time, however, there will be some kind of echo, whether we notice it or not.

No matter how small is our thoughtful action, our protest, or our good deed, we can still change the world. 

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

Aesop

In addition, in relation to a more negative kind of energy, seeking revenge against others who we feel have wronged us can leave in its wake all kinds of pain and misfortune…

“I’m not one to take revenge. If someone does something wrong to me I leave it in the hands of the universe to take care of that person.”

Lana Parrilla

Sending forth hopeful and constructive ways of thinking can produce echoes through our world; the psychotherapist Yalom talks of the process of rippling, in terms of the spreading effects that we each have on others around us. 

“Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates – often without our conscious intent or knowledge – concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations. That is, the effect we have on other people is in turn passed on to others, much as the ripples in a pond go on and on until they’re no longer visible but continuing at a nano level.”

Yalom. The ripple effect .
Therapy Today May 2008, Volume 19 No 4

“Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.”

Dalai Lama

Being mindful of the phenomenon of life as an echo, is very important if we are to develop self-understanding and an awareness of the effects we have on the world. If life constantly echoes back to us in negative ways, perhaps it could be helpful to examine what ‘vibes’ we are sending out?

What we emit does not disappear, its energy remains: this is, in a nutshell, the powerful theme of today’s post.

Echo (1900). Talbot Hughes. Wikimedia Commons

“No good act performed in the world ever dies. Science tells us that no atom of matter can ever be destroyed, that no force once started ever ends; it merely passes through a multiplicity of ever-changing phases. Every good deed done to others is a great force that starts an unending pulsation through time and eternity. We may not know it, we may never hear a word of gratitude or recognition, but it will all come back to us in some form as naturally, as perfectly, as inevitably, . . . as echo answers to sound.”

William George Jordan

What is meant by our energy returning to us? The above quotation begins to explain this wonder of the echo in our lives. This is not merely referring to the sound of our voice coming back to us when we have shouted into an empty space, but to the reactions, reciprocal responses and feedback we receive from others and the world.

Almond Blossoms. Vincent Van Gogh. 1890. Wikimedia Commons.

“Some day the kindness you give out will come back to you. Maybe not as soon as you’d like, but it will be here. Threefold, sixfold, tenfold. Your life will be full of ‘thank you’. Full of ‘I’m so glad you’re alive while I am.’ Blossoms everywhere. Love raining down on you. It will come.”

Emery Allen

• Echoes of our personal past

Mother and Child (The Goodnight Hug), 1880. Mary Cassatt. | Wikimedia Commons

“There is no love that is not an echo.”

Theodor Adorno

All love is an echo, says Adorno, but an echo of what exactly?

“A soul mate is not found. A soul mate is recognized.”

Vironika Tugaleva

When we encounter someone we love, inevitably, early experiences are awakened for us and they become revivified in the present; so what is love, really?

“To love is to recognize yourself in another.”

 

Eckhart Tolle

These words effectively express what is unconsciously at the root of our attraction to, and love for, another. This is an echo, deep and resounding, reverberating through the years of our past life into the present. This echo helps to remind us of what we are lacking in our lives. We need the echoes of our early experience of whatever love we had, so that we can find another who can respond to our heartfelt desires, another who has similar inner issues.

“We do not choose others at random. We meet those who already exist in our unconscious.”

Sigmund Freud

We unconsciously choose loving partners who can complement and complete us. What does this mean?  (For further information, please press this link to my previous post: Partner Choice: The Astonishing Role Of Your Unconscious Mind.)

Our partner selection process will inevitably be heavily influenced by the echoes of our past relationships with parents or caregivers. We all have unmet needs from childhood, powerful bonds that link us to past figures in our life and that keep us fixed in old patterns and ways of relating to others.

We are attracted to another because we unconsciously share some of the same unresolved issues and are stuck at a similar point in terms of emotional development. In my book Beyond The Smile: The Therapeutic Use of The Photograph (Routledge),Chapter 6 (pp122ff), I explain the process further:

“Such unmet needs from early life will be awakened in a relationship, in an unconscious attempt to use the opportunity to work through the problems associated with them. The hope is that each partner has chosen the other in order to recreate the shared past problems and thus work through them- for one cannot work through a problem without going into it again.”

Linda Berman.

We seek in another aspects of ourselves that will ultimately help us feel more whole if we can re-integrate them; we unconsciously search for people who can help us work through our problematic areas.

Childhood difficulties may mean that we ‘lose’ parts of ourselves that were not regarded as permissible by parents, society, or other figures in our lives. For example, we may have lost touch with our feelings, like anger, sadness and grief, because we were not allowed or encouraged to express these as children.

These forbidden aspects of ourselves become repressed, and we may forget that once we had such strong feelings. Yet their echoes remain, perhaps distressing us with their vague and niggling presence reverberating deep inside us.

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”

Milan Kundera

• Echoes of universal history

Echo of Bygone Days – Konstantin Andreevic Somov. 1903. Wikioo

“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”

Margaret Atwood

Echoes of the past are constantly heard in the present, yet, sadly, people do not generally appear to learn from history. The lessons of the past can, indeed, change our lives, if only we would recognise and heed them. These echoes from history can resonate powerfully in the world of today, but we must be aware of their potential and we ignore them at our peril.

History Repeating Myself, painting by Lizza Littlewort. Wikimedia Commons.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

In studying and understanding the past, we can learn much about patterns of human behaviour, about cause and effect, consequences and outcomes.

These messages are there for us to hear; it is because people are not mindful of them that the same patterns of thinking and behaviour are repeated over and over.

Individually and globally, human beings tend to keep on repeating the same mistakes, often with catastrophic consequences. History is made by human beings, some of whom are lacking in foresight, hindsight or impulse control; they do not possess the ability or desire to look back and see what they might be repeating.

“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.”

Tara Brach

• “Soundless echoes”

“Brothers, what we do in life……..echoes in eternity.”

Russell Crowe

Not all echoes have sound. Some are silent records of a past existence, whether this has been animal, vegetable, or mineral. I am constantly fascinated by traces, and lately I have been amazed by those of some long-dead grasses that have imprinted themselves on a building-site board near where I live.

Somehow, perhaps through the pressure of wind, rain, or other plants, these delicate grasses have become dried, pressed, and they still ‘bloom’ brightly. The live plants have gone, and yet their imprints, their traces, still exist and are still proclaiming that existence … beautiful, feathery stains, grassy ghosts, golden against a dark background.

The marks of their once fuzzy seed-heads, symbols of life and promise, proudly announce that they have been a part of the workings of nature. Their leaning positions may indicate that some of their seeds have been squashed and destroyed, but they still have been.

Every time I pass them, they speak to me and I am compelled to stop.

“We were here,” they say, “and, though dead now, we still prevail. Look!”

I do indeed look, and I behold nature’s craft, and I hear the silent echoes therein. Perhaps I did not even notice these grasses when they were alive, but now they are simply beautiful to behold in their lacy spectral forms. Death has given them a unique artistry.

“I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.” 

Thomas de Quincey

The various traces we humans leave behind when we leave this world are like echoes. Sayings, maxims, recipes, writings, marks, deeds, all these indicate that we have been, that we have contributed to the world, and made our mark.

The quotation above reminds us that, on a psychological level, too, memories are inscribed in our minds forever, even if they are repressed and hidden.

“The old echoes are long in dying.”

Charles Henry Parkhurst

Family Group – Joshua Johnson. 1800. Wikioo.

Family resemblances, too, are echoes. As we detect the traces of a parent or grandparent in the face of a child, we can be delighted that such silent echoes of the past are being transmitted into eternity, helping us to maintain links between past, present and future.

“For it is the young tree grown out of the old root which shall illuminate what the old tree has been in its wonders.’

Jacob Boehem

These silent traces and indicators of past existences are all around us…

George Roux – Spirit at the piano, 1885

“There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.”

Beryl Markham

Wilmington Giant (1939) by Eric Ravilious — Source: The Mainstone Press.Public Domain.

“To live means to leave traces.”

Walter Benjamin

Johann Heinrich Füssli – Silence. 1799-1801. Wikimedia Commons

“And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Yet echoes die, and fade away into nothingness. Once all echoes, all traces of a person have passed, then, as Longfellow says, the silence can be a torment.

Yalom reminds us that one day, such silence will occur in relation to his identity; there will be no echoes, no-one left alive who actually knew him.

“Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.”

Irvin D. Yalom

Listening to the silence that remains after all traces have gone can be very painful, and yet, it can contain for us something magical. The space, the emptiness, allow for endings to occur, for reflection and for new beginnings to materialise, giving us an awareness that something has existed, but is now gone, without trace.

• Authenticity and not being an echo…

Edvard Munch – The Voice , Summer Night. 1896. Wikimedia Commons

“Be a voice not an echo.”

Albert Einstein

Einstein’s words are significant to us all, in that he reminds us of the importance of having our own voice. He urges us to express our views and feelings without being afraid of how they will be received or interpreted by others. This comes through knowing that we have integrity, honesty, and something to give to the world, without fear or trepidation.

Being a voice, not an echo, means that we do not have to repeat others’ words because we lack the confidence to form or express our own ideas.

“You can’t make a difference in an echo chamber.”

R.A. Delmonico

When some closed and fixed groups of people share views, perhaps on the internet, and no one is permitted to express doubts or contrary opinions, people can become radically self-absorbed in their own unchanging ideologies and the group’s shared echo-chamber culture.

Such group pressure to conform can be powerful.

There is no opportunity for dissent, diversity, or contradiction; everyone will have to toe the party line. There will be no new ways of thinking, no learning, and no difference will be made to anyone or anything.

• Understanding the Echo myth

Let us end this post with a look at the myth of Echo and Narcissus; it is a powerful one and can be read as a cautionary tale. It warns us of the dangers of narcissism and the importance of self-awareness and our way of being in the world. The story urges us to be kind and caring to others.

The lesson within this myth teaches us to practise humility, whilst valuing and caring for ourselves. It counsels us, however, not to focus excessively on ourselves, as this can cut us off from others and render us isolated.

 

© Linda Berman