Learning to Walk

As a voracious reader, I sometimes wonder if I live vicariously through other people’s lives and to some extent that is true. Perhaps though it’s not a bad thing, if in doing so I can understand my own life better. That happens when I find a writer with whom I feel an instant and instinctive empathy. The great gift to me of such a writer, is their skill at articulating feelings and ideas I share. To know that another person has lived the same emotional dilemmas with which I struggle, is amazingly gratifying and when as occasionally happens they propose answers that suddenly astound in their lucidity and logic, that is for me true learning.

Quite recently I was drawn to read “My Dream of You” by Nuala O’Faolain, the Irish author. What attracted me to this work was a review which described the book as a single older woman’s confrontation with loneliness and ageing, and her pursuit of an elusive self fulfilment through relationships with men. Although not strictly autobiographical, the author’s reflections on a childhood impoverished in both the material and emotional sense, and her eventual realisation that much of her adult behaviour was subconsciously motivated by flawed parenting, are such that many will recognise aspects of their own lives here. I certainly did and the recognition was not a painless one. In retrospect much of my life has been marked, as was the character’s, by a futile search for fulfilment and self validation through relationships flawed by the complete incapacity of either partner to really love themselves or each other.

The inevitable conclusion that the inability to sustain a long term intimate relationship is linked to a sense of self worth not sufficiently nurtured in childhood, is one that probably every self-help book ever published hypothesises in one form or another. What makes its repetition in this book so startlingly real for me, is the allegory the writer employs to make the connection.

At a point in the story where the character is baffled by her inability to maintain a successful intimate relationship, she witnesses a mother helping her infant son take his first steps. The mother’s sheltering body is there as a presence behind and above her wobbling child, reassuring him of her support, picking him up when he plops down, encouraging him to try again, laughing and clapping her hands when he succeeds finally in taking a few staggering steps forward. Even when the child falls, he learns he is safe, he is still loved. He knows he has the strength of his mother’s loving arms to hold him when he needs support. What he doesn’t yet know, but will instinctively absorb, if he is lucky enough to have a loving, caring mother, is that because he has the shelter of unconditional love, it is safe for him to walk out into the world. He won’t have to keep something back, to constantly protect and guard himself from hurt. It will be safe for him to reach out in his turn to love and care for others.

The character in this novel sees how healthy people can let go of themselves. They are not afraid to forget themselves, to tell the truth, to believe that what they have to offer is something real and whole and authentically worthy.

In wondering later why this passage in the book made such an impact on me, I realised it helped me understand the inability of so many, and particularly myself, to relate honestly and openly to those they claim to love. I can, if not forgive, at least better understand my own weaknesses and those of others who have hurt me. Although I don’t think a difficult childhood should ever be used as an excuse for causing deliberate harm to others, it does explain in some way the injuries we so often unwittingly perpetrate.

The worst of these I think is the inability to break the barriers of self defence we’ve erected around ourselves to keep the hurts of the world out. In my experience, it is very hard to drop deeply ingrained protective mechanisms and walk fearlessly into unknown emotional terrain. I am however beginning finally to realise that the alternative is ultimately loneliness and emotional isolation. Perhaps with strengthened resolve and determination and the insights of brilliant writers like Nuala O’Faolain, I might one day succeed.