September 10, 2017 by alunparry
Alun’s Weekly Podcast (10th September 2017)
In this week’s show I talk about the tension between social change and personal change, how to forgive, why Liverpool can’t defend, and a milestone in my musical recovery.
All played out with the Song of the Week.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
bill ball - September 10, 2017 @ 2:07 pm
Hello again Al & thanks for another thought provoking chat.
I`m not sure if you intended most of your topics, today, to be inter-connected. But I felt that this was the case.
The subject of happiness is problematic because it is an entirely subjective emotion. “I could be happy mending a fuse, when your lights are gone”. I could also be happy laying on a nice hot, palm fringed beach. I could also, potentially, be bored, miserable & fed up doing these things.
Liverpool had a bad result against Man City. You were clearly unhappy about it. So I thought Liverpool must be struggling. I checked the table. You are 8th. If you hold that sort of form, you will be in Europe next season. I`m a Millwall supporter. We would love to have the problem of being 8th in the Premier League.
Maybe Klopp is bringing in players who cannot play the Liverpool way. A previous Millwall manager changed the formation depending on who we were playing. 4-4-2 one week, The Diamond the following game, The Christmas Tree the game after that. We struggled because our formations were not congruent with our style. He effectively took us down. When Harris came in, he said that 4-4-2 is the Millwall style & that is what we will play unless there is a damn good reason for not doing so. We were promoted under Harris.
Perhaps there is an analogy there. Is it possible that happiness depends upon the way we live being congruent with the sort of person we are?
Inner contentment links in with the your thoughts on forgiveness. Up to a point I would agree that the only thing that we have control over is ourselves. I am sure that your preliminary psychotherapy studies have included the work of Victor Frankl, who realized, that during his incarceration in Auschwitz, that the only real control that we have in our lives is our choice of reaction to circumstances that impact upon us.
But in most cases, I feel, that forgiveness as a result of empathy is impossible. We forgive in spite of, not because of.
In most cases, the other person can live quite happily without our forgiveness. In most cases they will not even accept that they have wronged us, far less seek our forgiveness.
So we need to forgive for us – not for them. If we can do it, it is empowering. We can move on. We can put down the baggage. But saying that we forgive someone & actually doing it are very things. I hope that your c;lasses & workshops will help people to find the route to achieving this.