I had a crazy kind of vivid, lucid sexual dream just before waking this morning. It was with a man I really don't know, but did years ago, and I have unexplainable feelings toward him. This got me thinking about what this dream meant. I conjectured that so many of us avoid wading into emotional waters in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt. We are afraid we might drown if we let go and give our already broken hearts to another. Or perhaps the dream was about wanting what I can't have. Regardless my dream certainly does not match my reality. But it was an curious reflection, and I do believe our dreams can tell us about the greater and lesser secrets of the inner world.
I am not big on giving or getting advice, suggestions yes, but here is the best piece of advice I've heard in a long time, from philosopher Martha Nussbaum, a letter she wrote, that can be found in James L. Harmon's book,
Letters To The Next Generation From People Who Know A Thing Or Two. She writes about the importance of having a rich inner emotional life, not fearing feelings, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, and how story telling can nurture empathy.
" Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and
most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very
outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest
piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status.
But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for
comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree
of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and
incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever
we are able to achieve. As we grow, we all develop a wide range of
emotions responding to this predicament: fear that bad things will
happen and that we will be powerless to ward them off; love for those
who help and support us; grief when a loved one is lost; hope for good
things in the future; anger when someone else damages something we care
about. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without
any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or
anger. But for that very reason we are often ashamed of our emotions,
and of the relations of need and dependency bound up with them. Perhaps
males, in our society, are especially likely to be ashamed of being
incomplete and dependent, because a dominant image of masculinity tells
them that they should be self-sufficient and dominant. So people flee
from their inner world of feeling, and from articulate mastery of their
own emotional experiences. The current psychological literature on the
life of boys in America indicates that a large proportion of boys are
quite unable to talk about how they feel and how others feel — because
they have learned to be ashamed of feelings and needs, and to push them
underground. But that means that they don’t know how to deal with their
own emotions, or to communicate them to others. When they are
frightened, they don’t know how to say it, or even to become fully aware
of it. Often they turn their own fear into aggression. Often, too, this
lack of a rich inner life catapults them into depression in later life.
We are all going to encounter illness, loss, and aging, and we’re not
well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us
to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our
possessions of externals.
What is the remedy of these ills? A kind of self-love that does not
shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts
those with interest and curiosity, and tries to develop a language with
which to talk about needs and feelings. Storytelling plays a big role in
the process of development. As we tell stories about the lives of
others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in
response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other
creature and learn something about ourselves. As we grow older, we
encounter more and more complex stories — in literature, film, visual
art, music — that give us a richer and more subtle grasp of human
emotions and of our own inner world. So my second piece of advice,
closely related to the first, is: Read a lot of stories, listen to a lot
of music, and think about what the stories you encounter mean for your
own life and lives of those you love. In that way, you will not be alone
with an empty self; you will have a newly rich life with yourself, and
enhanced possibilities of real communication with others. "
