by Tom Tomaszewski | Mar 30, 2023 | Tom's Former Blog
I was speaking the other day with someone about their experience of being asked to reflect. It became apparent that, as is often the case, someone who was being asked to reflect on their life was in fact being asked to reflect back to another person something that that person wanted to see.
I remember, in my own experience, being told by a teacher to reflect on something I had done and realising as I attempted to do so that no amount of my reflecting was going to change the fact that I didn’t like what he was about or that what I had done seemed necessary. I had turned a cross-country run into a protest at being told to run (which I actually enjoyed doing), and that this made a certain teacher very cross indeed.
Unfortunately that teacher wasn’t able to understand there was very little personal, towards him, in my refusal, but that what he was experiencing was a reflection of my life growing up with a certain kind of a father. My being able to refuse was to survive. Context was hardly an issue. What appeared to be an unfair command certainly was.
Fortunately another teacher, one of two men to whom I think I may owe my life, saw what was happening, took me to one side, asked if I was all right and drove me home from the school.
On reflection these kinds of minor miracle happen more frequently than one might imagine. At the time I was astonished.
On reflection I see how a certain kind of reflection, of the form that kind teacher offered to me (and genuine kindness is often a sign of emotional and intellectual depth) might dream up a very old relationship between mirrors and miracles. The words are related in their pre-European roots relating to astonishment and happiness.
Reflecting, reflective practice, like loving, is always narcissistic. Whether or not that reflection is able to offer happiness to more than oneself is what clinicians find themselves reflecting on when they begin considering categories such as ‘pathalogical’. And here I feel as if I am entering a hall of mirrors.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Mar 2, 2023 | Tom's Former Blog
I was speaking the other day with someone about their experience of being asked to reflect. It became apparent that, as is often the case, someone who was being asked to reflect on their life was in fact being asked to reflect back to another person something that that person wanted to see.
I remember, in my own experience, being told by a teacher to reflect on something I had done and realising as I attempted to do so that no amount of my reflecting was going to change the fact that I didn’t like what he was about or that what I had done seemed necessary. I had turned a cross-country run into a protest at being told to run (which I actually enjoyed doing), and that this made a certain teacher very cross indeed.
Unfortunately that teacher wasn’t able to understand there was very little personal, towards him, in my refusal, but that what he was experiencing was a reflection of my life growing up with a certain kind of a father. My being able to refuse was to survive. Context was hardly an issue. What appeared to be an unfair command certainly was.
Fortunately another teacher, one of two men to whom I think I may owe my life, saw what was happening, took me to one side, asked if I was all right and drove me home from the school.
On reflection these kinds of minor miracle happen more frequently than one might imagine. At the time I was astonished.
On reflection I see how a certain kind of reflection, of the form that kind teacher offered to me (and genuine kindness is often a sign of emotional and intellectual depth) might dream up a very old relationship between mirrors and miracles. The words are related in their pre-European roots relating to astonishment and happiness.
Reflecting, reflective practice, like loving, is always narcissistic. Whether or not that reflection is able to offer happiness to more than oneself is what clinicians find themselves reflecting on when they begin considering categories such as ‘pathalogical’. And here I feel as if I am entering a hall of mirrors.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Feb 13, 2023 | Tom's Former Blog
Think about what it’s like being looked at by somebody searching for something they want to see. To be regarded so intently without the possibility of difference. It’s so easy not to notice differences, and to find oneself unnoticed, for life to repeat. Thinking like this might be the beginning of something else.
So much gets lost talking about privilege, though I understand why you might want to.
Here we go again.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Feb 9, 2023 | Tom's Former Blog
Are we encouraged to live life as if it were less of a physical thing? I wonder, if we are, whose sense of life we are living?
If a happy child looks to a parent (if someone looks to anybody) and, rather than finding something of their own sense of joy reflected back, . How can they recognise happiness after encounters such as this? How can they not be dissatisfied or uncertain or become lost in the future? In the world’s people? Who are more prepared to use them than recognise recognise them
by Tom Tomaszewski | Jan 29, 2023 | Tom's Former Blog
I remember a piece of advice. I’m not sure what it was for or who it came from but the words linger: take great care.
Care, as many people recognise it, can mean making sure somebody or something gets what it needs. Great care involves making sure whoever or whatever receives what whoever or whatever particularly needs. We live in times of care, not great care. Box ticking as an exhausted act of doing the right thing; people too tired to listen closely, to follow gently.
Yesterday a serious of thoughts took me somewhere so weird. The feeling of the world I lived in before I’d ever seen a computer. Internetless,
