Buried Treasure

by William R.Morrow, D.Min.,LMFT . Email to:wmorrowmft@embarqmail.com

I recently had to clear out some outdated files of people I saw years ago. Proper protocol suggests

putting them (the files, not the people!) through the shredding machine, to keep confidentiality intact, and

consign all those old stories to the black hole of the universe, where passé information is sent. Probably,

by now, most of those people have forgotten what they had fretted or complained about that long ago

anyway. To keep the finely shredded papers moving in the right direction, I decided to dump them in my

backyard compost pile. Red wiggler worms in the vermiculture love to digest these old stories, as a primitive form of  “reading”. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to recycle all those life stories back into the dust they had been created out of, and put the phosphorous-rich shreds to good gardening use. What had been secrets and sad tales now were on their way to a proper burial, where they could do some good eventually next to the roots of my heliconias.

My professional contact with those struggling folks was a brief time in their lives of relationships. I

think they were unknowingly on safari, searching for themselves. The way I see it, everybody in life is on a journey, seeking and searching to discover the lost continent of the real and pristine self. Christopher Columbus didn’t know what he was going to find, but he knew two things for sure, that he was searching, and that he was on a great journey of some kind. For all of us, self-acceptance of the rough edges of our souls is the goal of the journey.

But, meanwhile, along the way, relationships become a diversion. The search gets delayed, and

becomes tied up in the pursuit of finding someone out there who will affirm us, accept us. It’s like we

budding human beings need the O.K. stamp-of-approval to validate us. But it never quite happens,

because even the greatest human relationship of love can never hope to produce this salvation, this inner self-affirmation that is, when you come right down to it, more like a spiritual experience than some kind of relationship success. This is not a lecture against having relationships, but, hey, let’s get them in perspective.

In a way, having a marriage is only incidental to having a life. I am a bad tour guide if I only work to help with the success of the relationship itself. Since it takes two whole people to have a whole

relationship, I believe it is my job, as tour guide, also to point out a few things along the individual route they each are taking. And, to some of those relationship-desperate people, I would like to say, “Get a

life!”

As the guardian of all those buried tales of old endings and new beginnings, blending of families, and sad relationship failures, I have to think seriously about what has happened to the sojourners I have met in my office. How did the story turn out? I don’t often get to hear the ending. I was just one stopover on their road to somewhere. I’m honored that they consulted me along the way, in their searches for happier solutions to their conflicts, in their searches to find some meaning in their losses, or as they looked to understand and be understood by their partners.

I assume that each one was on that awesome journey. And that each one ended up in a better place than did my files on them.

This was revised from a chapter in my book, “The Rain Doesn’t Fall Straight Down”, which is free for download on my webpage, www.WillimRMorrow.com