One of my big dreams is running my own private practice. I still remember vividly how I had found a sort of home when I walked into Josie Scott's practice in November 2011. Her room is not only warm and friendly, it is full of creativity. No, let me rephrase that, it IS creativity. I am quite sure that it does happen at times, but I can hardly imagine how a person would NOT want to start building, exploring, imagining, dreaming in this wonderful environment Josie has created. It felt like I could just arrive there and find me. Be me. Breathe me.
Ever since, creating my own practice where people can find and be themselves has been one of my biggest dreams. Thomas Merton once said: “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” We can let go, hold on, try out when we encounter ourselves in drawings, sand, clay. We can meet once again with our inner child and we can have a conversation with our grown-up parts as well. We can catch up with people we have lost, draw from their wisdom, resolve conflicts. We can do all these things when losing ourselves and finding ourselves in art.
There is only one problem: I haven't got a space for my private practice yet. I have created the space in my head numerous times: I have painted (and re-painted) the walls, experimented with furniture and lighting, decorated the room. And I have started my own sandtray collection which I keep in tool boxes. I have bought wonderful books which encourage feeling and thinking and exploring our own stories. I have ideas galore, but so far, this has pretty much just been a dream of mine. But is it just a dream after all?
Dreams are often vague, elusive things, sometimes behaving like scaredy cats who run away from us, who hide in their dark caves. And we can get desperate searching for them. And then, after roaming the forest in the dark, hoping that we would find the cat again, the rain sets in, soaks us, washes away our hope, our confidence, and we give up. We go back to our warm and comfortable and boring house. We drink the same old tea and eat the same old dinner. We sleep in the same old bed and wake up to the same old work. We are happy. Or we make ourselves believe that we are. We forget about the cat. And that is how we live day in, day out. And this is how we eventually die. We feel that something was missing all these years. We have some vague memories, but we can't quite catch those either.
I know that I won't be able to make all my dreams come true. Sometimes I realise that some dreams are not worth chasing after so I let them go. And some dreams need adjustments. And others are worth fighting for. They inspire us, motivate us. They still run away, are difficult to catch, but with the right preparation, I can brave the dark. I can brave the rain. I can brave whatever the journey might throw at me. So, planning my private practice, collecting equipment, buying books is my way of preparing myself for the journey. This cat, this dream, I won't let go. It might not be around the next corner, but it will be there eventually. Till then, I will keep on preparing myself. Because it is worth it.
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