Beyond Velveeta

Living out your dreams can be more therapeutic than analyzing them. -Advertisement for a Hawaiian hotel

Two psychologists were walking down a corridor when they passed one of their colleagues. The fellow smiled, greeted them with a "Good morning!" and continued on his way. As soon as the man passed out of earshot, one psychologist turned to the other and said, "I wonder what he meant by that."

Many of us have been involved in self-analysis, introspection, therapy, and processing our relationships for a long time. There is no end to emotional processing; some of us have been more processed than Velveeta. There comes a time when we must quit trying to figure it all out and just go out and do something. While delving into our subconscious motivations is valuable, eventually we must extricate ourselves from the caverns of analysis and start to live. We will learn more from doing than trying to figure it all out.

Woody Allen quipped, "When I went into psychoanalysis, my biggest fear was that I would emerge with the personality of a 19th-century Jewish Viennese neurotic cocaine addict. Now after eight years of therapy, I would have gladly settled for that!" In his movie, Sleeper, Allen is accidentally frozen in a hospital and wakes up 500 years in the future. When the technicians who revive him tell him what year it is, he exclaims, "My God! I'd almost be done with therapy by now!"

The goal of therapy is to get us up and functioning. Therapists or patients who make a religion of keeping the patient in analysis forever have substituted the form for the goal. The best therapists are those who encourage patients to live their own lives, make their own decisions, and move on to the next level. It's time to get on with life, which will teach us in joyful ways as we live from celebration.

Give me the simple heart of a child that I may enter the kingdom.

I trust life to reveal my riches to me.