Rovello, is spectacular, and precious. It has old churches, beautiful gardens and a music festival that had just ended.
From Wikipedia:
The town has served historically as a destination for artists, musicians, and writers, including Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg, M. C. Escher,[4] Giovanni Boccaccio,Virginia Woolf, Greta Garbo, Gore Vidal, André Gide, Joan Mirò, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Graham Greene, Leonard Bernstein and Sara Teasdale (who mentioned it in her prefatory dedication in Love Songs).
and me too. We had lunch there, at a spot that was rated by some travel site as the 2nd best restaurant view in the world. Here's a picture:
not bad.
_____
But now that was almost three weeks ago. I look back at that lunch as a turning point. I finally decided to relax, take it all in and be there. I realized that during the weeks, perhaps months, leading up to the trip I had become pretty tense. Sitting there, on top of that hill, eating marvelous food, sipping easy wine, smiling with my lovely wife, things became a bit clearer.
What I had been concerned about was how both my profession and myself seem to be slipping, very slowly, into a irrelevancy. After more than thirty years as a therapist I am beginning to have some doubts. I know that I have been very helpful to many of the over 5000 people I have tried to help. But I also know that there were many who thought the whole things was a waste of time. I also feel that the pace of life these days makes the inefficiency and ambiguity of psychotherapy more glaring and almost unacceptable.
I don't know of a better method, certainly not using more drugs. But the way things are done now is not great. Also, the entire health care system is going though major reforms, especially now that the election has made that clearer. Where psychotherapy fits into this is very unclear.
But, at that moment, on top of that hill, it was time to let it go, live in the moment, appreciate how good my life is, and trust that I would figure things out --- at least for me.
As the Dali Lama says in one of his tweets:
"Peace in the world relies on individuals finding inner peace."_____
But now that was almost three weeks ago. I look back at that lunch as a turning point. I finally decided to relax, take it all in and be there. I realized that during the weeks, perhaps months, leading up to the trip I had become pretty tense. Sitting there, on top of that hill, eating marvelous food, sipping easy wine, smiling with my lovely wife, things became a bit clearer.
What I had been concerned about was how both my profession and myself seem to be slipping, very slowly, into a irrelevancy. After more than thirty years as a therapist I am beginning to have some doubts. I know that I have been very helpful to many of the over 5000 people I have tried to help. But I also know that there were many who thought the whole things was a waste of time. I also feel that the pace of life these days makes the inefficiency and ambiguity of psychotherapy more glaring and almost unacceptable.
I don't know of a better method, certainly not using more drugs. But the way things are done now is not great. Also, the entire health care system is going though major reforms, especially now that the election has made that clearer. Where psychotherapy fits into this is very unclear.
But, at that moment, on top of that hill, it was time to let it go, live in the moment, appreciate how good my life is, and trust that I would figure things out --- at least for me.
As the Dali Lama says in one of his tweets:
Isn't it enough just that the Dali Lama is Tweeting to make you happy?
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