Trees Will Sprout Again
Exciting topics and touching moments often appear in our weekly group meetings. Of course, I always cherish those moments but rarely share them in writing. So why do I share it again? It is because the topic today is related to the topic of last week!
In my last article, I said one of the topics in our last week’s meeting was death and Thanatos. Believe it or not, the strength of Eros gets increased! Let’s look at the conversation first.
……
E. Do you feel the other is real or just a picture when you talk with somebody on Zoom?
F. I have been doing online therapy for years. I feel that the person on the other side is far beyond a picture. They are very real to me. Both transference and countertransference can happen.
J. There is an object in my room. It is…only an online patient noticed it (He turned his camera to the thing while talking. I neither heard the object’s name nor saw the item because a text message distracted me. It seems it is a sculpture of an Indian figure from his description.) while no other patients coming to my office ever noticed it.
E. You all know Freud put hundreds of antique objects that he collected in his office.
F. Once, when I looked at the picture that he took with the objects, I closed my eyes to imagine it. I saw the things turning around him; look like they were having a conversation with him. I also associated it with the toy in a child therapist’s room and the objects for the sandbox therapy. Probably those objects function as the “sandbox objects” for him.
E. Do you put interesting objects in your office? (E asked other people.)
F. I have a small black sculpture in my office. I bought it in Mexico; the seller told me it is the god of medicine. Once, a client asked me: what is that?” I told him it is the god of medicine.
K. I want to show you two things that I have always hung in my office since I was a resident.
K got up to get the things and showed them to us. The first one is a black and white picture. On the white background, there is a black abstract painting.
K. Guess what it is?
F. Well…a snake?
K. Here is a fish, here is a bird. (K pointed to the picture.)
I see a fish at the bottom and a bird on the top, looking at it carefully. It seems the kind of Aboriginal painting.
K. (put up the second painting) This is the work of Pablo Picasso. You all know it.
Everybody wowed.
The second painting is one of the works of Pablo Picasso. The overall colour of it is pinkish, with thick lines. But, the most significant is the different round shapes in the picture--round faces, the round breasts, the round protruding belly, and the expended round womb. And the woman stretches her arms holding a big oval-shaped circle. Inside the oval, there are a round face, two round breasts, a round belly, and a round womb. My impression is the woman is holding an enlarged womb, her own womb. Inside the womb, it is her baby.
If you are familiar with Picasso’s works, you probably already know which painting it is. It looks familiar to me but could not remember the picture’s name. So I googled it after the meeting and found the name of the painting called “Girl before a mirror” (Pablo Picasso: Girl before a Mirror Paris, March 14, 1932), illustrating a girl standing in front of a mirror. Is my initial understanding of the painting wrong? I don’t think so. Art is something to provoke our imagination and for us to project. I do feel the painting is about life, fertility, and beauty. The emphasis on the breasts, belly, and womb is the praise of fertility.
I was interested in what happened on March 14, 1932. I continued my googling; I wanted to find out what happened on that day. There was not too many findings. On March 14, 1932, a girl who became the first lady of Russia later on, was born, and George Eastman, the American inventor who invented the Kodak camera, suicided. What happened on March 14, 2022? I continued my googling. theweek.com listed ten important things—eight are related to the war, one is about the death of an Oscar movie star, and one is about NFL.
E. Let me show you something! (E got something from her bookshelf and showed it to us on her palm.)
K. What’s it? A little dog?
E. It is a little dog. My kid made it at three years old.
K. I want to show you one more thing. (K got up to get a black and red object and showed it to us on her palm, too.)
E. A little turtle!
K. It is a turtle. I bought it in Mexico and put it in my office.
J. I will show you an interesting one. (J got up and brought back a brown thing made of straw.)
Y. What is it?
F. Look like a mask.
J. Yes, it is a mask, an Indian mask, called Yam Mask. Look, here are eyes, they are ears, and here is the beard. (J pointed explained.) Yam represents fertility.
F. Let me show you something, too! (F gets up and takes a wood carving.) Look, what is it? (F paused a moment.)…it is a tiger. Look, there is a “王” on his head. Please look at his tail. What does his tail look like?
They looked at the tail for a moment, and somebody burst into a laugh. The tail is carved into the shape of a penis and standing tall!
After the meeting, E sent us a picture of the plants in her house. The plants are green, and the flowers are in bright colours.
I forgot to mention that E’s beautiful cat was on her desk, standing or lying down, or walking on the desk during the whole meeting.
In Greek mythology, there is a god called Eros; he is the god of love and sexual attraction. There are different versions of Eros story. In one of the versions, Eros is one of the four primordial gods and was born from the Chaos. In contemporary English, chaos is used to describe the extreme confusion and disordered state, as in some places in the world now. However, its original meaning seems just formless. Therefore, the mythology of Eros seems to tell us that the primal force of love and life comes from the state of formlessness, confusion, or disorder.
In the ancient mythology of China, there is a legend of Pan Gu, the creator of the universe. It says that the sky and the earth were unseparated at the beginning of the world. The world remained formless, like an egg. Pan Gu existed in formlessness for 18,000 years. After waking up, he separated the sky and the earth with his own strength/body. Since then, various lives started to appear on the planet.
About the beginning of the world, ancient Greek mythology and ancient Chinese mythology are so similar! They both think lives or love (Without love and sexual attraction, without love) came from the chaos.
The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Zi also said: “There were no names at the beginning of the world. Naming is the mother of the world.” I think what he means is that the world was chaotic blur before the human had knowledge of it. Here, the chaos is not saying that the sky and earth were unseparated, not saying everything is formless chaotic. It says that things became clearer and clearer after humans started to understand the world. We may feel clear about something that we know well. I think we all have the experience that something seems unclear until we know it. For example, suppose you are a psychologist. In that case, you may feel confused by the astronomy phenomena unless you happen to be an astronomer as well, and vice versa.
Of course, mythologies are untrustworthy; they are the ponderings of ancient people about the world and attempts to explain the world that is so unbelievably magnificent! However, is their reasoning actually in the right direction?
否极泰来（fou ji tai lai）is a Chinese idiom, meaning the darkest hour is before the dawn, or good things start after the worst reach the peak. It is the optimistic belief of Chinese, related to another belief of Chinese philosophy & Chinese medicine, that is Yin and Yang . In Chinese philosophy and Chinese medicine, it is believed there are four types of dialectical relationships between Yin and Yang, they are 1. Yin and Yang have the same source; 2. Yin and Yang are of roots for each other; 3. Yin and Yang are opposite; 4. Yin hatch Yang during its domination and vice versa.
According to the Yin and Yang theory, I think you will agree that Eros belongs to Yang category and Thanatos belongs to Yin category. According to the idea of Yin and Yang hatching each other, during the dominating time of Yin/Thanatos, Yang/Eros force is growing gradually. At a point, Yin/Thanatos and Yang/Eros become balanced. Then, Yang/Eros would likely become dominating. As such, it repeats ad infinitum. It is always so for millions and millions of years!
Take the example of the past almost two and half years, when COVID-19 rages on in the world, people help each other, keep optimistic and humorous, and use creativities to maintain their love for life and work. Yes, we could not go to the theatres, travel, and party. However, we had balcony concerts and virtual concerts, zoom meetings, long-distance therapy, and virtual graduation and wedding ceremonies. We also learned the new baking skills and menus. We planted more flowers, plants, and vegetables in our garden and the house. In addition, we become used to daily walking and hiking from time to time. In the past almost two and years, I have hiked more trails and visited more parks than in the past twenty years.
When the dark clouds of war shrouded the beautiful land, when the rumble of artillery fire ruthlessly destroyed lives, kind-hearted people all around the world wanted to lend a helping hand by providing material and spiritual support. Humanity shines through the dark cloud from the very beginning. All of these let us see the silver lining around all the clouds. These are all manifestations of life force.
Recently, several friends and many clients said to me that they feel time seems to fly extremely fast in the past two years. I have a similar feeling, too! Time goes at a constant speed as always; it never speeds up or slows down. When we were and are waiting for the pandemic is over, we feel that time is slow, so slow, as if we can’t see the end of the torment, but looking back on the past two or three years, they feel that time has passed quickly. Why is this? In the past two or three years, many things that should have happened and expected to happen, such as planned trips, reunions of loved ones, etc., did not happen. So, looking back, there are so many blanks and gaps that two and half years have been jumped over. I think that is why we feel that time flies so fast.
Looking back, it seems we have been living in a different era and space that occupied our normal life before.
I sincerely hope that the topic, the energy of Eros that emerged in our group meeting, could be a sign of the emergence of a more significant increase of the life force. I think it is coming true; after one another virtual conferences and seminars, the live ones happen again; more people go back to the office now; masks and social distancing mandates have been lifted in many countries; and theatres, malls, and restaurants are full of people again.
An old friend and I met for the first time since the pandemic today. It was so exciting to see her face in person.
Today, when I was watering my plants, I found several tiny sprouts growing out of a broken, dead, and dried branch of a succulent. So naturally, I was delighted and called my whole family to come to look at it.
Since last week, the temperature has been constantly over zero in Toronto. When winter passes, the trees will sprout again. They will, as always, as every year, just as the topic of life comes up after the death topic of last week.
I sincerely hope that the epidemic will pass soon, the world will go back to peace, and everyone’s wishes will come true!
Yes, they are my good wishes; I hope they will come true.
References
Girl before a mirror: https://webneel.com/famous-pablo-picasso-paintings
10 things you need to know today: March 14, 2022. https://theweek.com/briefing/daily-briefing/1011262/10-things-you-need-to-know-today-march-14-2022
On this day. https://www.onthisday.com/date/1932/march/14
Eros: https://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Eros/eros.html
Eros: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros
盘古开天：https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%9B%98%E5%8F%A4%E5%BC%80%E5%A4%A9/74007