Many have a lover and others would like to have one. And then there are those that do not, or had one and lost it. It is the latter two that suffer most from symptoms such as insomnia, lack of will, pessimism, crying spells and various pains.
“These are people whose lives are monotonous and without expectations, working just to survive and do not know how to fill their free time. In short, they are truly hopeless”, writes Jorge Bucay, Argentinian gestalt psychotherapist, psychodramatist, and writer, in La Brújula del Cuidador.
In relating his story, Bucay says that before his patients telling him all the above, they had already visited other clinics where they recevied sympathy and diagnosed with “depression” and were prescribed antidepressants.
The Argentinian says that, “after listening carefully to my patients, I tell them they do not need an antidepressant, that what they really need, IS A LOVER”.
“It’s amazing to see the look in their eyes when they receive my verdict. How is it possible that a professional would prescribe such an unscientific suggestion”, says Bucay.
Not all leave his office frightened. Those who stay get his definition of a LOVER: that what exictes us, what occupies our thoughts before falling asleep and who also sometimes does not let us sleep. Our lover is what distracts from our surroundings, what makes us know that life has meaning and motivation.
Sometimes a Lover is found in our partner, in other cases in someone who is not our spouse. We also often find it in scientific research, in literature, in music, in politics, in sports, at work when the vocational transcends the spiritual need, in friendship, in the obsessive pleasure of a hobby…it is “someone” or “something” that make us a friend of life and moves us away from a sad fate of just getting by.
What is just getting by? Watching how others live, visiting doctors, taking medicine, denying ourselves the perks, seeing every new wrinkle with disappointment, afraid of the cold, heat, sun and rain. Getting by is postponing the chance to enjoy today, embracing the fragile reasoning that perhaps we can tomorrow.
The tragedy is not encouraging oneself to live; meanwhile and without a doubt, having a lover…
“To be content, active and feel happy, you have to be a lover of life”, is what psychology has discovered, says Bucay.
Article from QMaxine
