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Last week I wrote a post about the sado-masochistic relationship.  I pointed out in this post that the sado-masochistic relationship was different to domesitc violence.  This left hanging the question of domestic violence, so this post is a sort of follow-on from that post.

If you have strong feeling about domestic violence then please feel free not to read any further.

First let’s clear away some myths.

Here are the results from a study of males suffering domestic violence - following up previous studies on females suffering domestic violence.  [Study by Robert J Reid and colleagues at the Group Health Center for Health Studies.]

Myth 1: Few men experience domestic violence. In-depth phone interviews with over 400 randomly sampled adult male Group Health patients surprised Dr. Reid and his colleagues: 5% had experienced domestic violence in the past year, 10% in the past five years, and 29% over their lifetimes. The researchers defined domestic violence to include nonphysical abuse–threats, chronic disparaging remarks, or controlling behavior–as well as physical abuse: slapping, hitting, kicking, or forced sex.

Myth 2: Abuse has no serious effects. The researchers found domestic violence is associated with serious, long-term effects.

Myth 3: Abused men don’t stay, because they’re free to leave. In fact, men may stay for years with their abusive partners. “We know that many women may have trouble leaving abusive relationships, especially if they’re caring for young children and not working outside the home,” said Dr. Reid. “We were surprised to find that most men in abusive relationships also stay, through multiple episodes, for years.”

Myth 4: Domestic violence affects only poor people. “This is a common problem affecting people in all walks of life,” said Dr. Reid.

Myth 5: Ignoring it will make it go away.

Which brings us to the question that people who haven’t experienced domestic violence are often puzzled by: why doesn’t s/he leave?

These answer to this question comes from my talking to and friendships with those who have suffered domestic violence.  It is just my reflection on others experience.  I don’t claim that it is comprehensive.  They are just my thoughts for what they are worth.  If you have other thoughts and insights to contribute please do so in the comments.

1. Ethical objections to leaving. 
Some people feel that it is their duty to stay in a relationship where they suffer violence.  This is easy to reject out of hand but I’m not sure we should.  Most of us don’t leave a relationship as soon as it doesn’t suit us.  How many mothers leave their children even though it means staying up nights for little reward?  I want to pay tribute to the honour and truth in this position.  Suffering can be positive.

I grew up in a tradition that values martyrdom - mainstream christianity.  This is quite a different evaluation of suffering to the “If I’m not enjoying it I’m out of here” school. 

So I understand and honour some elelments of this ethical stance.  And I think it is usually best for people to leave a situation where they are suffering violence.

Firstly about martyrdom.  The martyrs went to their deaths rejoicing.  If you can’t do this then it seems most likely that the suffering is demonic rather than a summons from the divine.  Secondly, about children.  The value of suffering for our children is in the context of the growth of a healthy person and a healthy relationship.  Usually staying in a situation of domestic violence perpetuates a very unhealthy relationship - this is a decisive difference.

2. Psychological difficulties with leaving.

This can be what is called ‘learned helplessness’.  People who are violated often are left devoid of initiative.  (The complement to this is an all-consuming and unreasoning rage, which they suppress because they feel to let it out will have devastating consequences.)

It can also be that they feel they ‘deserve’ to be treated badly.  This is often the case with abused children.  They feel that they are in some way to blame, or if they weren’t bad then the other person wouldn’t have done this to them.

This can be extreme and extraordinarily difficult to be with.  A woman therapist I knew was working with a woman in an awfully abusive relationship - she had been hospitalised many times and still wouldn’t leave.  The woman therapist said, “Look, he nearly killed you - it probably was just an accident that you weren’t killed.  What could be worse about leaving?”  Dealing with this kind of stuff is quite awful.

It is important to say that rage can be worked with in a way that is safe to all people and that doesn’t damage the furniture.  It can take time and patience and lots of support but it can be done.  It is sometimes part of self defense for women classes.

3. Nowhere to go.
Sometimes external circumstances are very difficult.  In small communities - whether geographrically like a town with a small population, or in other ways (eg religious or other groups) - there can be no external supports.  Leaving means leaving the whole social network. 

This is really a problem with the rest of us.  I’ll give an example from my own tradition - mainstream christianity.  The denominations could get together and announce that every congregation would now have people in it who would offer sanctuary to anyone suffering domestic violence (the names would be kept secret).  There could be a phone number for people to ring so that anonymity could be guarded.  They would also institute programs that worked with perpetrators.  This would involve some training and other costs.  My guess is that it could easily be funded in each country by the selling of a cathedral or large piece of land. 

Usually perpetrators do not stop their violence until someone outside the relationship becomes involved.  Usually someone with social sanction, such as the police or other officials.  Perpetrators usually don’t change until they ‘have to’ - having to because otherwise they’ll lose the relationship or end up in gaol.  This is unfortunate but it is true in most areas: we usually feel stressed and over-burdened and don’t want the hassle of changing.  It is just as true in the situation of domestic violence.  If you are in a violent relationship or know of one, it is well worth considering getting officialdom involved.

Finally, it is important to say that domestic violence can and does end.  There are relationships where the perpetrators have changed: their violence has stopped never to return.  In my experience this has always been after the person suffering the violence has left.  I have personally known relationships where this has happened.

I’ve written this with much nervousness.  Writing about this in cold type means it can feel cold and like the suffering is being trivialised.  I hope this doesn’t read this way.  I decided to take the risk because it is a topic that needs dealing with.

Please feel free to leave any and all comments in the comments section after the end of this post.

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These three qualities come from Transactional Analysis (usually abbreviated to TA). (Transactional Analysis is a psychotherapy invented by Eric Berne and his friends - people such as Muriel James, Dorothy Jongeward, Stephen Karpman, Claude Steiner and many others - on the West Coast of America in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The best introduction to it is Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward’s Born to Win.)

For TA awareness, spontaneity and intimacy form a rough and ready definition of psychological health. Let’s have a look at each of them in turn.

1. Awareness means being in touch with what’s going on: not only the physical world around us (by sight, sound, touch, taste and smell) but also within ourselves - knowing our own thoughts and feelings on the different parts of our lives. It also means having a sense of our social world - the codes of communication that we use and what our psychological needs are.

Awareness can sound intimidating. So, I want to stress that most of us do a pretty good job of it most of the time. We generally don’t go around bumping into light poles or offending one person after another. (Unfortunately we tend to remember the unfortunate events so we can end up thinking that we have less awareness than we do). For most of us, most of the time, we get through the day reasonably satisfactorily.

What usually happens is that our awareness doesn’t function so well in one or two areas (for instance, listening to what you like as food - a major challenge for me - or relationships with members of the opposite sex). Once we realise that we have good awareness in other areas we can start looking at why we don’t use it in the area we have difficulty with as well. Often it will be due to some kind of trauma in our past.

2. Spontaneity, at least as TA speaks of it, does not mean acting thoughtlessly - ‘doing the first thing that comes into my head’. It means choosing from the options available.

Often we get into routines. These are valuable and make our lives easier. Unfortunately they can also lead to us getting stuck in a rut and feeling stale. Choosing from the options available helps us remember that we have some control over our lives, which can be very refreshing when we are feeling stuck and stale.

3. Intimacy means being close to what we find precious and valuable. This will usually mean that we can be close to others also. (There are times, with dangerous people, where this isn’t appropriate). Being able to close off to others is also part of intimacy: being forced to disclose everything does not lead to intimacy but defensiveness and sometimes shame.

One of the striking possibilities with intimacy is that it can happen through differences, not just similarities. When we speak about our individuality and listen to another person speaking about their uniqueness then we draw closer together. We get closer by appreciating each other’s differences as well as being united by our similarities.

Here are some ideas for what you can do to increase the amount of these qualities in your life.

• To increase your awareness

keep a journal
take a few minutes to sit quietly, pray or meditate

• To live more spontaneously

try using the phrase ‘there are always six options’ as a reminder to look more widely the next time you feel like you don’t have much choice about what to do.
set aside five or ten minutes in the next day to imagine as many ways of possible to do something routine (say the washing up) - ridiculous is permissible (a garden hose that dispenses detergent as well as water?). Frances Gabe invented a self-cleaning house with a nozzle in the roof of each room that did this.

• To have more intimacy in your life

connect with the emotion of what someone is saying as well as the information
let others know what you care deeply about it (especially if it is them!)
What do you make of awareness, spontaneity and intimacy as a definition of psychological health? Would you like to add other qualities? Do you think this is just way off beam? Let me know in the comments.

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1. First up is Tom Stine.  I’ll do him first because he is the person who I feel closest to and with whom I disagree most passionately.  Tom’s blog is explicitly about practical spirituality.  Which means his perspective is similar to mine (if it doesn’t affect our lives it’s not worth spending much time on).  Tom is also the most Taoist of the three.  And I love Taoism for its very practical emphasis and down to earth wisdom.

As to the disagreement.  I should say that I mostly don’t disagree, but on some things we disagree passionately.  Most recently Tom did a post on “Are All Thoughts Untrue?”  Tom’s answer is “yes” and mine is “no”.  I guess you couldn’t get a bigger disagreement.  The post was done more than a week ago and the comments are still going strong.  It is a post very worth reading - as are many other posts by Tom.

2. I have written before about Albert at The Urban Monk.  (He is not a monk in the sense of being part of an order).  Albert is studying psychology at a university and so has a mix of eastern and western perspectives.  Albert posts less frequently but with long posts.  Each post is a very substantial treatment of one area in depth.  He writes personally about what he has learnt from his own experience and always with an eye to how the topic can help us in our lives.  He writes clearly and well.

3. Finally, but by no means least is Wade at The Middle Way.  Of these three blogs this is the one that is most firmly writing from within a tradition.  As you might have guessed it is from a Buddhist perspective.  The Middle Way is described as “Commentaries on Meditation, Zen, Buddhism and Mindfulness”.  Wade writes with awesome clarity about his experience (jealous? moi?) and the benefits of different kinds of practice.  This includes the understanding of koans - check out his latest on Yunmen’s Sumeru.

These three blogs are all clearly written and are concerned with how what their topic can benefit our lives.  I also must say that they all also deal graciously with comments: even those which disagree passionately and sometimes perhaps too tersely - I mean those by me.  If you look at the comments on these blogs you will find I’m there and engaged.  I recommend them all highly.

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It takes in the conventional and mainstream as well as the ‘altenative’.

It is a directory not a website - it is a list of blogs and websites under different categories.  You go to the directory and find blogs and websites under different topics (it could be acupuncture or nutrition and weight loss).  You then browse the blogs and websites listed under the topic.    It gives the google page rank for the sites and blogs listed: this indicates popularity - it is not a guide to the accuracy or helpfulness of the information provided.

There are far too many topics to work through on any one visit.  It would take months to visit them all.  From the topics I’ve visited and then I know about the listing look quite good.  It even has a heading for plastic surgery.

It does contain links on beauty treatments and so forth as well.  And it contains a heading for shopping specifically - sites and blogs dedicated to selling stuff related to health and beauty.

I think this would be a useful directory to have if you want to check out a new area of interest in the health field.

A note about blog reviews.  I’ve decided to keep reviewing other blogs that I find interesting even though it may not provide immediately useful information about health.  This is partly due to friends I have made on other blogs and because I think the blogs  have good content.  I’ve decided I’ll make the reviews extras to my other posts - that is I’ll keep up my normal posting schedule (usually three posts a week) so that if you aren’t interesed in reviews you can just not read them.

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Recently my best friend had a does of food poisoning, or some stomach bug.  They woke up at 4:30 in the morning and started vomiting every 45 minutes.  We got to a medical centre as soon as it opened and she got some pills to stop the vomiting.  From here it was a case of convalescing.  And though it took a few days for their stomach to get better, and they still felt nauseous, there was no more vomiting.

I didn’t want to get sick like this.  So I did everything I could to stay healthy.  As well as not drinking from the same things as my friend and so forth I also wanted to check in with my body.  I did feel a little nauseous and was a bit worried - vomiting every 45 minutes is really nasty.  So I asked by stomach what it needed.  And this is when this phrase occurred to me: “flood this body part with goodness”.  At this point my nausea settled a little.  So for the next few days, every now and again, I’d come back to this phrase while sensing how my stomach was feeling.  Thankfully I didn’t get the stomach bug.

Am I sure that it was this phrase that did the trick?  My feeling is that it helped.  Does this mean that it would work for you?  No.  Does it mean saying this phrase would have made up for me being silly and not taking care in other ways - not sharing cups and so on.  I don’t think so.  But in myself I feel that it helped.

For me the phrase felt like a discovery.  I didn’t feel that I thought it up, it felt like a part of my body talking to my conscious self.  I didn’t search through affirmations I know or anything like that.  It felt like the phrase came to me without any thought on my part.  It came with a feeling of release and relaxation.  There was a sense of golden light - though not a terribly visual sense (doesn’t make sense really, I know.  But that is the best I can do to communicate what it was like.  There was a sense of light, but I didn’t imagine it visually - I’m not a very visual person). 

As I stayed with the phrase over the next few days a visual aspect did emerge.  It was a smiley face.  Rather like those emoticons you see in some posts.  It changed according on how my stomach; a smiley face when my stomach was feeling good, a sad face when I was feeling a little nauseous.

Since then, when going for my walk in the afternoon I have experimented with using this phrase on other parts of my body, and seeing the smiley face according to how other parts are feeling.  When I do this I feel myself relax and walk more easily.

Finally I have a bit of a mixed feeling about the phrase itself.  It sounds to my ears a bit clunky.  It doesn’t have the resonance of those affirmations like: loving energy means I digest life and nourish myself easily.  If I had invented the phrase consciously I would have wanted to come up with something like this.  And I did try out other phrases like this but they just didn’t fit as well.  And it is a very Evan kind of phrase - quite direct but not exactly graceful.  I was most surprised with the word “goodness”, I would have used the word ‘love’, if I had come up with the phrase consciously - or perhaps ‘healing’.

So that’s my story of how I found this curious phrase and how I’ve worked with it since.  If you want to try out my phrase and see how it affects you I’d love to hear.  Also if you want to check in with your body and find what phrase (or visualisation or something else) comes to you I’d love to hear about that too.  Please tell me what you find in the comments.

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A couple of posts ago I asked for questions - and I sure got one. Here is a part of it:
“I’d like to know what you know about abused and abuser, masochist and sadist. The thing that most interests me, is the possibility of one person understanding well enough what is occurring and can still manage the retention of a relationship on some level. I just wonder if this absolute of having to remove oneself from the situation is the only solution.”

So this post is delving into a pretty confronting area for some of us. Feel free not to read on.

I’ll start with what I know about this kind of relationship.

It is important to emphasise that the relationship between the sadist and masochist is somewhat different to domestic violence. With those into the s&m scene there is usually some kind of voluntary agreement. With domestic violence this isn’t the case. In the s&m relationship there is often the swapping of roles, this too is different to domestic violence.

It is also important, in my opinion, to not define people just by their sexuality. People who engage in s&m sexuality also do the washing up, play scrabble, love their children and their partner.

The people I’ve know well who are into s&m usually have sexual abuse in their history. This means that a part of themselves has felt victimised. S&m can be part of taking back control of themselves and their sexuality. It is, in my opinion and according to my values, important that people do have control of their own sexuality - what they give and what they withhold. This can also be part of young people being promiscuous. I think that knowing the motivation for behaviour can make a difference to how we respond to it.

One of the insights I’ve gained from gestalt therapy is that it is helfpul to think in polarities. The poles here are sadist and masochist, victim and abuser. The polarities also occur within each individual. With s&m the victim is engaged with feeling powerful and the abuser feels victimised. This occurrence of the polarities is what gives the relationship its charge. The victim/masochist exercises their power by withholding orgasm - ‘you can do anything to me, but you can’t make me come’. The sadist/abuser feels both degraded and strong, doing fully and yet frustrated in their action.

It is essential to note that both partners achieve some sexual satisfaction. Again, this is different to domestic violence.

The dynamic in s&m is withholding and explosion. When the withholding is extreme then this becomes painful, and the normal pleasurable sexual release is mixed with pain. There are elements of this in other situations. I once asked a boxer why they did something so painful. They replied that, it was often said, the pain lets you know you’re alive.

Usually we wonder about the masochist. It seems to me that there needs to be some way in which these people feel bad about themselves. This may well be past sexual abuse (of which incest is by far the most common kind). They feel bad about themselves (perhaps especially their sexual selves) but they still want to feel sexy and achieve the sexual release. So they mix the feeling bad with the sexual. This attitude in a mild way is pervasive in our culture - eg the figure of the femme fatale, or the male who is ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, and their is talk of a ‘dirty weekend’ (ie. one of sexual pleasure), and so on. The masochist is an exaggeration of a very common theme.

Often it is assumed that we understand the sadist more readily. This says lots about our culture, and none of it good. Once again this attitude is pervasive in our culture in a mild way. It feels good to ‘beat’ others - whether in sport or on an exam. Children for years on end are rewarded for ignoring their own needs and complying with the dictates of others (’for their own good’ of course!). The dynamic for the sadist is that they have an inner victim. They feel pleasure in triumphing over themselves (the attraction of Nietzsches aristocratic philosophy is an example of this).

The s&m relationship brings us up against difficult moral terrain. Aren’t adults entitled to conduct themselves sexually however they like with other adults; as long as they both agree? But how can this kind of relationship which seems degrading be appropriate? The most extreme case of this kind that I know of is of cannibalism, where the person gave written permission to be killed and eaten. It seems that there is some distance between the legal and the ethical.

My values are that life is a postive strength with particular qualities: compassion, creativity and so on. (I also have religious convictions but these are only useful to other people of the same convictions - and even then there are remarkably strong disagreements within the same faith tradition - so I’ll stick to discussing life.) From this perspective it is possible to say that some things are bad (multiply death, bring destruction - everything from the corporate production of terminator seeds to our conduct with others).

I think behaviour makes sense in context - and part of the context is our past experience, our present thoughts and behaviours. And if you wish to change a person’s behaviour with their consent then it helps to know the context. In this situation: telling a person who is in an s&m relationship that they are bad and their sexuality is bad won’t help them leave. This is probably part of the reason they are in the relationship!

I think it is possible to offer people in an s&m relationship the possibility of healing bringing together the different parts of themselves and living a more pleasurable and fulfilling life. This is the possibility open to all of us, not just those of us in an s&m relationship. Most of us have splits between different parts of ourselves, most of us are drained by the fighting between these parts. Healing these splits offers us all the possibility of more life. And as I pointed out, in a mild form, s&m is a pervasive part of our culture: those in the s&m relationship are just acting it out our cultural norms in a more extreme way.

This is my understanding of the dynamic of the s&m relationship.

Now to the rest of the question. “The thing that most interests me, is the possibility of one person understanding well enough what is occurring and can still manage the retention of a relationship on some level. I just wonder if this absolute of having to remove oneself from the situation is the only solution.”

In an s&m relationship the dynamic is usually fairly well understood. They can be quite stable, long-term relationships. The people involved usually don’t want to leave. They find fulfillment in their relationsip - and I think the satisfaction is the confirmation of beliefs: that they, and their sexuality, are in some way bad. As well as the other benefits of being in a relationship.

My values are that it would be better to be in a relationship of mutual pleasure where no one gets hurt. And I can offer a path to this - a path that offers a gain in pleasure, not one where you discipline yourself ‘for your own good’.

If one person wishes to change in a relationship, and the other doesn’t, then sometimes the relationship will end. So sometimes leaving will be the only solution. Other times our relationships change and evolve for our mutual benefit.

I hope this answers the question asked. I am aware that this can evoke strong feelings. You are very welcome to leave comments. Disagreement is welcome. The post where I invited questions is called Questions Please. Feel free to leave any questions you would like me to write about (I don’t claim that I’ll have anything useful to say, but if I do think I have something worthwhile to contribute I’ll do my best to answer it).



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I’d like to introduce you to a very general process for dealing with psychological problems. As far as I have been able to find out it was first formulated by Dr Fabian Rouke in the 1950’s. It is called the “onion skin model” of the self, it has three layers. This is my interpretation of his model based on my own experience. The big advantage of this process is that you can start with just about anything: you don’t need to have a big issue, you can start with a vague discontent or something unfocussed.

First Layer
The first layer is our everyday self. This is usually positive. We like to ‘put on a happy face’, to look as if we are doing fine and handling all our challenges. Usually this is untrue in some ways. So this is in some ways fake. This part of our selves has a brittle quality.

Second Layer
And we fake it for good reason. We fake it because there is a second layer. This is the part of our self that we believe is unacceptable - certainly to others and usually to ourselves as well. These are the parts of ourself that we don’t want to look at and wish just weren’t there.

Usually we learned that parts of ourself are unacceptable from those around us - usually quite early in our lives. Sometimes our early carers explicitly told us that parts of us were bad, other stuff we picked up by example. If we had to eat our meals whether we liked them or not we probably learned that our sensations are not good - they are to be ignored. If sex was never discussed we likely concluded that our genitals were something to be ashamed of.

Usually what we were told is easier to get a handle on than the models we copied. With what we were told there is something ‘out there’ to fight against. Taking on the models is trickier - it seems like it was all us.

First Step: Moving from the first to the second layer.
Sometimes, in places where we feel accepted, we reveal some of the second layer. Usually we hesitate and wonder if we can trust the other person enough to let them in. We feel like we’re taking a risk. If we feel like the other person is reliable and accepting enough we will let them know at least a little about this second layer of our self (the part we don’t like).

We also deal with this layer by ourselves. By ourselves it is also about acceptance. This can be trickier even than revealing this part of our self to another. We have perhaps spent a good deal of our lives and energy hiding this part. It may even be that hiding some parts of our self is now a habit, we do it automatically. We try to catch our selves hiding and find out how good we are. At this point others - friends or therapists - can be helpful: people who won’t be tricked. The other person’s job is just to point out what we’re doing.

When working with this layer by myself I have it helpful to listen to the part I don’t like. This part of me may have lead to problem behaviour or behaviour that had consequences I didn’t like. But when I listen to this part of my self I find that what the part wants it healthy. The basic need this part has is good: we have developed unhelpful strategies for meeting the need but the need, and our desire for having it met, is entirely legitimate. We may need to learn other ways to have this need met but that is a different matter. Learning ways to express or meet the needs of a good part of us is very different to hiding a part of us that we feel is bad.

Why bother with all this work? And it can be hard work. Because of the third layer.

The third layer
The third layer is the core of who we are, our authentic self. When we are in touch with this part of ourselves our lives have a different quality. It doesn’t mean that our live circumstances change automatically or that we don’t need to learn new things. But we have a sense of being in touch with what is going on and the people around us - and this is profoundly nourishing.

Getting to know the parts of us that have been ignored, disowned or suppressed leads us back to our real self.

Second Step: Moving from the second to the third layer.
There comes a point where we feel like we have ‘faced our stuff’. We feel tired and that we have come to the end of ourselves. And we have, in one sense. It is the end of the second layer of our selves.

The challenge at this point is perhaps to wait or perhaps to explore more deeply. At this point we need to feel the energy that has been bound up in keeping the second layer of our self hidden. If we just feel tired and don’t feel this new energy then we aren’t at the third layer yet. We don’t reject the second layer of the self - we reclaim it. The part of our self that we rejected (for good reason at the time) we now have as part of us again. All that energy that was ignored or suppressed is now part of us again. We will often feel elation and a sense of release when this happens.

When we are in touch with our authentic self we don’t ‘drift around on cloud nine’. We have a sense of being very grounded, while also having a sense of meeting life. For me this has meant the development over the years of what I call an ‘elated-calmness’: a buoyancy and flexibility. For others it will naturally be different, in accord with who they truly are.

Third Step: Takin’ it to the streets
What is often the high of breaking through to the third level doesn’t last. It is the elation of release and relief. While we will be living without the old fighting with ourselves, and this will mean we have much more energy, this is different to the high of the breakthrough.

Being in touch with our authentic self in one sense is just natural but in another sense means learning a whole new way of living. All the defenses and strengths of the second layer were important. They were a way of guarding and caring for our authentic self. Now that we don’t do things in this way automatically we need to develop other ways of relating to ourselves and others.

We may need to learn to listen to our bodies, and this can take time. We may need to know how to greet people politely without being fake (I don’t claim to get this right every time!). We still need to develop skills for our jobs and recreation. We still need to learn how to relate to people we find difficult. The world is still what it was: it doesn’t change magically just because we have. The difference is that we now live without fighting ourselves, and this feels so much better.

I hope this isn’t too vague. I was going to use lots of examples for each part of this process but it is already a long post. And that would have doubled or tripled its length. If you have questions please leave them in the comments. I have found this process incredibly beneficial in my own life, perhaps you will in yours.



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Play Is Strange

A friend of mine is an amateur musical production.

[It is of a Gilbert and Sullivan era musical called “Florodora” - the first British musical to make it big on Broadway.  It is running for the next two weeks.  All those reading this who are near to Erskineville, Sydney, Australia in the next two weeks are expected to attend.]

My friend was telling me about a rehearsal - all the usual logistical and ego problems, when they remarked how strange acting is.  The more I thought about this the more intrigued I became.

Why would people put all this effort into dressing up and playing pretend?  They’re not making any money from it, it doesn’t provide them with food or clothing.  And its done mostly with strangers (this production is pulled together as a project - it’s not an ongoing group).  Why give up time with people who are already good friends and loved ones to get together with strangers and pretend?  For a couple of hours people will pretend that something they know doesn’t exist, never has, and never will, is real.  And people will pay to see them to do this.  It really is puzzling.  What could the attraction to this kind of thing be?

The first answer that occurred to me was entertainment.  And this certainly is true for the audience.  But it doesn’t begin to explain the attraction of acting or the dedication that people have to it.  People go through a lot of stress, for two or three months, to put on a few hours of theatre.  They could all far more easily watch TV.

I think part of the attraction is being part of a group with a common purpose.  To be part of a group like this I certainly find enlivening.  And it gives us something that we have far more control over than many other aspects of our lives.  There are many demands on us which we choose to go along with and that would require a good deal of energy to resist.  Projects like this give us a far higher degree of control than we often experience in our lives.  This can be thrilling.  But that doesn’t explain the attraction of the theatre.  Why not join Habitat for Humanity or do something that requires much less effort and stress?

Some people dedicate their lives to pigment on canvas or graphite on paper.  And it is all quite ‘useless’.

A musical, or dedicating one’s life to an art, is a big commitment.  Play occurs in small ways too.  When at the beach, we make sandcastles. 

I think all this does show us that Jesus was right when he said that, “[Mankind] does not live by bread alone.”  It also shows us that there is a pleasure in doing things - even things that are very hard work.  The idea that we just want to do the minimum to survive or be comfortable is spectacularly wrong.

Maybe we need to look more closely at what play is.  For me it is characterised by attentiveness and not being directed to an external reward.  When we become concerned for the reward then play is at an end.  People may be rewarded for playing but to introduce this to the playing destroys it.  Actors get awards for playing well, not for competing for the Oscar.

Play opens up a space in our lives.  It gives us a break from what is serious and important.  It is paying attention to what is happening, just because we find it interesting.  It has its own kind of seriousness, an attentiveness and focus, that is different to the seriousness of the rest of our lives.  It is a time set aside from scheduling and organising ourselves to achieve goals.  And it is refreshing.  We feel better after our times of ‘just playing’. 

Our schedules and goals can help us live more easily but I think it is play that adds lightness and joy to our lives.

Let me know about the place of play in your life.  Is it one thing you do (like a hobby or craft) or do you just like to muck about with what is around?  And how does play feel to you?  What is the experience of playing like for you?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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