One of my neighbors suddenly left our nice residences. One
and a half month ago she invited me, some other people living at our place and
some of her friends for a New Year’s Eve dinner. Without saying a single word
of goodbye she left. A couple of days later another person, a friend of her,
also left. She lived next door for a month and without saying a simple word or leaving
a single message she also left.
With another neighbor I talked about this for me a bit
sad and funny and instructive experience as well. She compared living life as
taking a ride in the train. The idea touched me and I started to contemplate on
it. Actually a wonderful mirror, this train.
You can see the train as your temporary life path on the
never ending, ongoing changing and developing world. We are all traveling on
the crust of this small planet, earth, and nowhere else. This is a constraint.
The changing scenery, wonderful fields, rural villages,
crowdie cities, industrial parks, garbage fields, beaches, mountains, and
tunnels as the influences you have to face and or to deal with in life. They
all pass by. At several stations the train stops. An opportunity to leave and
explore for a longer or shorter time or… to just go on. But always a stop so
you can think about leaving or going on.
You start
to take your train ride immediately after birth. Actually after conception. And,
you are not alone in life, so not in that train. One of the things that Alfred
Adler in his book ‘What life could mean to you’ explains as a second
constraint. ‘None of us is the only member of human race. There are others
around us (in that life train), and we exist in association with them.” So if
you like the people around you or not… total isolation is not possible. We are
always tide to others. Adler mentions a third constraint; Human beings are made
up of two sexes.
Individual Psychology has found that all human problems
can be grouped under three main headings: occupational, social and sexual.
So here we go in our life train. Some people sitting
close to us. Some further away, some very far away. We do not even know them.
Other people walk in for a short trip or a longer trip. So they stay short or
longer and maybe even they take the nearly same ride but are in another
compartment of the train and you never saw them or see them. And at a certain
moment you reach ‘ocean view’, end of your time. The life train goes on without
you and you created space for somebody else to take your place. For again a
short or longer ride…
So, comparing your life and connections in life with a
train ride. Don’t feel sad. It’s just facing nature and no one can escape. Some
people go and create space for new people to take place. Up to you to be
willing and open to interact. Up to the other persons to respond or not. Also
up to the other people to say goodbye or not. Be only a mirror. Be aware
mirrors do not have emotions. So do not be affected by their choice.
In the present time people in trains less and less
interact in face-to-face conversations. They are in their own digital world.
Not even being aware of the changing scenery outside. Does it still matter to
them?
Frans Captijn
Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.
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