I’ve done the ‘middle life crisis’ thingy – and several times at that – so I guess it’s time to pull a different coloured rabbit out of the hat…
So here we, on a sultry summer’s day on the eve of the Sad Tokyo Olympics with a blossoming late-life crisis to contend with. It didn’t begin all at once as an existential hole; it began lightly…
My knee swelled up.
I told my running mate Malcolm Balk that maybe I have water-on-the-knee…
A group of luminaries from the AT scene had signed up for my “Alexander’s Story” workshop, where unbeknownst to them, I was also adding for the first time my concept of “The Compass” – based on J. G. Bennett’s book “Enneagram Studies”.
I was in New York - leading my Compass debut in the Soho loft of my adopted elder brother Bill Walsh. I’d been leading this workshop in Europe over the last month, but I had not previously incorporated into it my interpretation of Bennett’s Enneagram.
I had used Bennett’s “Enneagram Studies” to develop a “ Compass” which neatly summarises the process FM used to make his discoveries.
I boarded the plane for New York, clutching my copy of J. G. Bennet’s obscure book “Enneagram Studies”.
Many people are aware of the 9 Enneatype Personalities – I have studied and taught this to actors – but few know that the enneagram symbol is also an elegant way to summarise Alexander’s Discovery.
As my teenage daughter grew older a new word appeared in her vocabulary.
I woke up to it first when I saw her talking to someone in town. As I approached them, the older woman walked away. We were in Mullumbimby, a country town in Australia where people know each other, but I didn’t recognise her.
Abuse can be life-saving - although that may initially be hard to conceive.
It’s a matter of perspective: for one person, it is care; for the other, it is abuse. As I pointed out in my previous daily “I Was Physically Abused” , Alexander Discovered the gap between perception and conception, the place where all misconceptions arise.
“You can’t know a thing by an instrument that is wrong.” FMA
I once had a girlfriend who adored me most when I was depressed.
She labelled “depression” differently from me – for her, I was real when I was “depressed”. However, when I thought of myself as balanced, happy and outward going, she found me erratic, hysterical and lost in a world of my imaginings.
