Heroes Not Zombies

We make sense of the world holistically. It might not seem like that sometimes, but, even when we put on blinkers, turn abstraction up to the max, and go all in on reductionism, ultimately, reality leaps up and let’s us know…..there’s something else you need to consider here.

There is always something else.

Knowledge is never complete. Truth is never fully known. Understanding is never full.

I love this photo of a crystal because you can see how the sphere contains a multiple of facets, and you can see that through each facet you can see the others. I think reality is like this. Multifaceted, multidimensional, massively interconnected. There are no clear beginnings, no clear endings, nothing is entirely separate and detached, nothing is closed. Life is an “open system” of continuous flow and change, unceasingly responsive and adaptive to environments, contexts and signals.

Human beings are relational, social creatures. None of us live in isolation. We find our uniqueness in our complex webs of relationships, memories, experiences and imaginings. There isn’t a single facet, or aspect, or characteristic, or feature which makes us unique. Our uniqueness is found in our connections.

And so, this is how we make sense of the world – through pattern spotting and recognition, through images, words, myths and symbols, through abstraction and reflection, and synthesis and integration.

Sense making is holistic.

I think that realisation should keep us humble. It should remind us that none of us ever know all there is to know about anyone or anything.

A couple of the most common things patients said to me at the end of a consultation were “I’ve never told a single other person what I’ve just told you”, and, “You know me better now than anyone else does”. And I understood what they meant…..that they had revealed an important, powerful secret, or memory, which they had felt unable to reveal to anyone else, and the revelation was enlightening……or that they felt they had been heard, understood, even known better than ever before. Yet, I would think “Well, how much life have you and I shared through these consultations? (whether this was the first consultation or the tenth one) And how big a proportion of your whole life do those few hours represent?” Because even when I felt we’d achieved a new, and deeper, level of understanding, I still knew that I only knew a little part of this person’s life.

There is always more to know.