Four decades ago we were captured by the cult of money. “Successful success”, “achievement”, expensive brands… Did it make people happy? And why do people today turn to a psychologist in search of true friendship and sincere love?
Recently, more and more often, as a psychotherapist, I have been asked to help meet a friend. The client has a family, children, nevertheless, the need for spiritual intimacy, sincerity and simple human intimacy is felt very sharply.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said that there is only one luxury in the world — the luxury of human communication. A person needs a person with whom you can talk excitedly for hours, with whom it is safe and warm. In my opinion, it is this kinship of souls that makes us human.
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In the Islamic tradition, this phenomenon of attraction is explained by the fact that there is an abode where souls are before incarnation in the human body. And if the souls were nearby in this monastery, then in earthly life they will definitely meet, recognize each other by that invisible attraction that a person yearns for so much.
Romance of the past
The age range of such appeals is quite large: from those over 40 to those who are barely 18. All are united by nostalgia … for the romantic USSR. What does it mean?
The films “I walk around Moscow” by Georgy Danelia and “Courier” by Karen Shakhnazarov are considered to be the symbol of the romantic USSR.
They glorify friendship for the sake of friendship, as a separate value, irreducible to rational benefit when the hand washes its hand.
Some of my clients, not finding or disappointed in friendship with others, choose philosophers, writers of past centuries as friends. Alone with books, they feel like themselves. They find there consonant with their thoughts ideas and images.
There are also many requests for love. It often happens like this: at first a person studies for a long time, a lot and diligently, then builds a career, business in accordance with the values of pragmatism of mind and body. But there is no happiness. The category of happiness weakly correlates with material values, but with security and comfort, yes.
Friendship, love, kindness, generosity, mercy on top of material values are absent
I am reminded of a meeting with a businessman who has achieved a lot in his field of activity. I entered a huge, blindingly white office, with a large telescope by the window. She sat down on a white sofa upholstered in antelope skin. The businessman spoke bitterly about loneliness, betrayal, absence представљају love. While the ex-wife said that after unsuccessful deals, he drowned her in the bathroom …
New ethics and old values
In a rational movement towards a strictly defined goal, those psychological qualities with which one can love, make friends, admire simple things that warm the soul in a cold world do not develop.
In Western pragmatism of the mind and body there is no place for the soul, the thought of the heart, as the Jungian psychologist Henri Corbin said, referring to the books of the Sufi sages of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. The thought of the heart connects us with the soul of the world. The soul of the world fills us with Light and that symbolic wine about which Omar Khayyam wrote.
In my opinion, the phenomenon of “new ethics” as a phenomenon of the XNUMXst century is also intended to fill the void of pragmatism
Logic knows exactly what will lead a person from point A to point B, but in this movement there is no place for the thought of the heart, the life of the heart. They still want to convince us that the main thing in life is to study well in order to earn a lot of money later. But no one says that money is often spent on drugs that illusory fill the emotional cold, emptiness and pain of disappointment.
The struggle for the recognition of equal rights and freedoms of people who have previously been discriminated against is certainly a step forward. But in any act-out there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the water.
Maybe it’s worth taking on the ship of the future such traditional values of the “old ethics” as friendship, love, kindness, decency and responsibility
“We are responsible for those whom we have tamed”, regardless of skin color, orientation, religion. The world of the Others must become a full-fledged part of the world of traditional values without denying or condemning either one or the other. The only Path worthy of man is the Path of knowledge and love.
You can’t say better than the Apostle Paul: “Love endures long, is merciful, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, is not proud, 5does not rage, does not seek his own, does not get irritated, does not think evil, 6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth; 7covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything.