A Counselor’s Holiday Message: 2003

It is that time of the year again. I recently found myself walking through a national home improvement store chain and there at the end of one of the aisles was a display of those old fashioned Christmas tree ornaments with the light bulb inside that boils the water and makes bubbles inside the ornament - those of you who remember Christmas in the 1950's will know what I am talking about. Well, didn't that simple display catapult me back to Christmas 1952 faster than Austin Power's pink Cadillac. I could "see" the ornaments bubbling on the tree at my grandparents...I could smell the molasses cookies baking in the kitchen...I remembered the orange glow of the electric candle in the bedroom window when I went to bed on Christmas Eve.

It's funny how powerful some stimuli can be, how visceral a reaction one can have to a particular smell or song or sight. And no two stimuli have the same effect on different people. Sure, the same "oldie" on the radio may take you back to the summer of 19?? when you were on the beach with Mary or John while it takes me back to the same year, but during a different season or a setting on the opposite side of the country. These sights and smells and sounds are like the keys to a lock on the treasure trove we call memory. True, sometimes these keys open the door to recollections that were intentionally banished to the realm of oblivion, but "sometimes" may not be too high a price to pay to access the potential joy of “remember when.”

The opening cut on Garth Brooks' alter ego album of 1999, "In the Life of Chris Gains," is entitled, "That's The Way I Remember it": How apropos that cut is to my recent holiday experience. Yet, as I prepare to celebrate my first Christmas as a grandfather, I take pause to wonder how much of what I remember is "actual" fact and how much is "manufactured." I guess it does not make all that much difference as the memories conjured up by that Christmas ornament in the store is one that brought a smile to my face and a sense of personal warmth that seemed to start in the heart and radiate out through the fingers and toes. I wonder if recognizing how such palpable experiences in the present can link to treasured memories in the past can work in reverse? I am curious if by imagining the future, as we would like it to be, if we might be able to experience the present differently? Could a future vision facilitate beginning the process of creating that very imagined time to come? Similar to Scrooge when he awakes Christmas morning only to pursue a changed path in life, courtesy of his visit by the spirit of "Christmas yet to come," I wonder if envisioning the fruits of successful change cannot "jump-start" motivation to begin the process of change in the here-and-now?

Before you dismiss my holiday greeting this year as so much manufactured holiday cheer and a not-so-cleaver parody of the Dickensian Christmas classic, I beg your indulgence and ask you to consider one additional point. What if we all have the ability to recalibrate our own psychic gyroscopes? What if the change we desire in the present is more the result of our expectations of the future than determined by our perceived view of reality in the past? What if human growth and the exercising of human potential is not so much determined by past experience and one’s perception of its details, but rather is the result of recognizing possibilities in the future and setting forth in their pursue in the present?

I believe that we ARE the experts on our own lives and experience, and our interaction with each other as fellow human beings permits us to discover this fact. Like the observant naturalist that sees the camouflaged creature by the woodland path, invisible to the unobservant or untrained eye, we can learn to recognize our own potential. I teach my students of counseling that they know they have arrived as an effective therapist on the day when a client proceeds to outline a personal epiphany that is, in essence, a synopsis of the last several sessions conducted by the counselor AND that counselor agrees with the client's perception of breakthrough, feigning complete surprise and awe, all the time resisting the temptation to announce to the counselee, "DUH, that's only what we have been discussing in treatment for the last several weeks!"

I believe that what one sees in his or her future affects how one thinks about the self in the present. If I see myself as unable to begin changing a troublesome behavior in the present because of a belief that nothing will ever be different in the future, I lack the motivation to ever contemplate the requisite changes to improve my situation. Yet, when I learned that I would be a grandfather and fantasized about mentoring the next generation as was done for me, a sense of efficacy begins to well up inside, the result of which is a belief that change in the present may be possible. Can envisioning a goal in the future and recognizing that it can be achieved prompt me to begin the arduous journey of change in order to seek that goal via individual efforts made in the present?

Always the incurable optimist, I am first and foremost grounded in reality. I know that this time of the year is possessed of no greater or lesser ability to facilitate miracles than any other time. To borrow from one of Billy Flynn songs from "Chicago," "splendiferous" things happen in July just as often as they do in December. What may be different, however, is that at this time of the year we human beings are more apt to suspend our need to worship at the alter of rational empiricism long enough to wonder and fantasize about the possibilities of the future.

In 1983 I went to the basement garage to take out the trash. I found my 6-year old son and a friend playing in an empty cardboard carton in which a refrigerator had just been delivered. As he exited the box on his way to his next adventure I asked, "What are you guys doing?" Without missing a beat Josh quipped, "Oh, we just landed on Jupiter and now we are going outside to explore." I smiled and dismissed this whimsy of childhood until later that afternoon when I happened to look inside what I had mistakenly viewed as a large cardboard box. There on the sides, in brightly colored crayon, were all these dials and gages, the accoutrements of interplanetary travel as perceived by 2 6-year old boys. It was then that it dawned on me that my son had actually traveled to Jupiter…and it was I who had to rethink his understanding of reality.

A popular Armed Forces recruiting ad exhorts, "be all that you can be." Not a bad objective, although I am not crazy mad about the rest of that implied message. Implicit in this exhortation is the belief that there is a point in the future when one will have arrived...will have become, if you will, all that one can be, at least at that time. It is such an expectation of the future, in the present, that enables me today to do what is necessary to transform my dreams for tomorrow into reality, irrespective of what others may think. As the old Chinese proverb admonishes, "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person busy doing it."

At this special time of the year I wish you and your loved ones a blessed and peaceful holiday season and the happiest of New Years. In keeping with this wish, there is a wonderful quote by Paulo Friere, a well respected educator and vocal champion of formal education that goes something like this: "If education is to be truly liberating, it must focus upon the existing situation of people, allowing them to reflect upon their condition and empowering them to change it." I believe this can be said of life in general. To the extent that we can travel back through time on the wisp of a sight or sound or smell--or perhaps even travel to Jupiter in a cardboard box--then just maybe if we can see ourselves changed in the future we can find the motivation to begin the process of change today. With this I suggest that Matthew's oft quoted verse in the Christian Bible at this time of the year, "Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men (sic.)," is not so much a holiday euphemism as it is a vision for the future that motivates personal change today.

To read past holiday greeting, visit http://www.robertchapman.net/essays/essay.htm

Best regards,

Robert

Robert J. Chapman, PhD

Coordinator, AOD Program

Associate Faculty, Clinical/Counseling Psychology

La Salle University

1900 W. Olney Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19141-1199

Phone: 215-951-1357 Fax: 215-951-1451

mailto:chapman@lasalle.edu

home page http://www.robertchapman.net

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