Sunday 26 April 2015

Living in colour ?


 
A few weeks ago I really enjoyed watching the movie 'Pleasantville'. The movie portrays a TV show set in 50's America where everything is all totally safe and well 'pleasant'. Nothing bad ever happens, roles are conformist, the basketball team always wins, there's no such thing as fire and the fire service just rescues cats from trees, couples sleep in separate beds.

 In the movie two people in modern day are sucked into the show and their influence causes things to change and minds to open up. It sounds corny and it is in a way but the people start to change to colour as they open up new parts of themselves which weren't apparent to them before. One of the main characters played by Toby Maguire changes to colour as he stands up to a gang of guys hassling a woman. His sister played by Reese Witherspoon, the kind of cool bad ass girl in modern day turns colour as she protects a book she proclaims is the only book she's ever read.

This reminded me of the therapeutic process and times in my own life when things have become blocked for a period of time then suddenly something happens and there's a breakthrough and I'm free. A pain starts to come out and something else opens and there are new possibilities or new ways to see something that seemed such a problem before. The inauthentic self is typically rigid. It's bound and confined to living to outer conditions imposed on us. It is a putting on a front and pretending, a role based life. The authentic self is free and Carl Rogers uses a term I love, 'fluid'. This freer self is forever open to possibilities and living a life which is more risky in the sense it is constantly open to experience and of growth and change. It is constructive and forward moving. This part of myself I have always easily found and also so easily lost in bad times. Just now I'm really learning the importance of daily practices to keep myself centred and aware so I'm experiencing in colour.

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