As some of you know, I am getting ready to go to Italy to teach for 5 weeks. This is an adventure for me. Until a few years ago, every trip I took involved a presentation I had to give or a conference I was attending. I’m a different kind of traveler. I’ve been happy exploring the inner topography of humans.
Therapists walk a few miles of a client’s journey with them. I’m pretty sure that if my cumulative client miles were exchanged for vacation miles I could be in another galaxy by now. I have no regrets, though. I have seen a lot of the deeper world through the eyes of my clients. I have been the tour guide for a psychological excursion or two. Clients got better, and I’m no worse for the wear, probably because the baggage was not mine to carry.
I do have a message to carry, though, and I hope that my story makes you think about your own story. Charting more of your own inner territory provides a great template for understanding others. I’m using my trip to Italy to expand my own understanding.
Culture Dysphoria
Even though all of my grandparents came from Italy, I have never really resonated with the Italian culture. I haven’t rolled a meatball since 1970. It makes my hands itch. Loud family gatherings make the rest of me itch. I did attend a Catholic school, and that should count for something toward a cultural connection but, according to my father, I made the nuns cry. I feel like a Gypsy stuck in an Italian body.
The Cohort Connection
We all have two cultures — the one to which we were rooted the one in which we grow. I like to teach about the powerful effect of age cohorts. I believe that my Italian “Meh” Syndrome is a direct result of being an early baby boomer. I was in college during the human rights movement. I was a part of all that flew into the face of tradition.
The passion of those times never left me, maybe because there is still so much to accomplish. I looked forward to a future of inclusivity and acceptance, where gender disparity was a thing of the past. I thought I would be aging in a fair and peaceful world, eating clean food, breathing clean air, and wistfully humming “Imagine.” It never happened.
Go Deeper
The gloomy themes of disengagement from my ethnicity and disappointment for my age cohort could be seen as a conflict to be resolved, but there is a deeper story. It is a matter of content and process. The poles of tradition and activism are content — the “what” of my history. The process is the “how,” (as in how did I turn out to be so happy).
The Italian culture may not be a fit to what I do, but it certainly fuels how I do it – with passion, purpose, humor, and spice. My grandfather raised three families. He kept his job during the Great Depression. He fed the neighborhood with his garden, and did haircuts and shoe repair for any children that needed it. My grandmother welcomed people who were struggling into her home. She made sure that all of her progeny registered to vote as soon as they came of age. Had they been Baby Boomers, we would have called them hippies. At the deepest level, I make perfect sense to myself in the cultural realm.
The Message
I believe that most people who go to counseling for this kind of conflict would make perfect sense to themselves if they went a little deeper. If you are a counselor, you can take them there, but only if you know the path yourself.
Please share your stories and impressions by replying to this post.
Nicki
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