During the previous few decades, I (ie. Markku Salo) have conducted some hundreds thematic interviews with long-term mental health service users for research purposes. When asking them about their dreams and aspirations, the striking, almost law-given first-hand reply has been, that ‘I have never been asked (seriously) about my dreams and aspirations’. Obviously, when not ever being asked, it takes a bit of time to reflect upon one’s future.
Picking one person as an example could be a former psychologist who, by the age of sixty had lived for years in a rehabilitation home. She told me that her dream was ‘to write the story of my life’. Two weeks after the interview, I phoned her and asked her how her writing was proceeding. She asked: ‘did you take my dream seriously?’. ‘Of course, how could I do anything else’, I replied. So, she started her literary journey. Within in a year and a half we were at the inauguration of a book, which included her story. When making a speech in front of a hundred people, she maintained: ‘I hope that my life story can be of use for younger people, maybe to help them avoid some of the obstacles that I had to encounter.’
So, whether we like history or not, we think it is good for a person to know, who she/he is. To know oneself is one of the fundamentals of mental health. Obviously, in the world of continuous change, chaos and turbulence, knowing oneself has become a life-long and continuous journey. The journey might even be more important than the destination. A journey guided by the signposts, like:
- Where do I come from? What are my cultural, ethnic, social, spiritual and class roots?
- Have I experienced any major social, emotional, spiritual and class transformations during the course of my life?
- Where am I heading right now? What are my dreams and where do my aspirations come from? How is mental health linked to my dreams and aspirations?
- Am I primarily a citizen of my hometown (or the place where I live); or of the region/province, where I live; of the country or nation where I live – or do I have a cosmopolitan identity [2]?
[2]. Cosmopolitanism indicates ‘a way of being in the world, a way of constructing an identity for oneself that is different from, and arguably opposed to, the idea of belonging to or devotion to or immersion in a particular culture.’ Waldron, J. (2000). What is cosmopolitan?
Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 2, 227.
I don’t like history
history is not my story
my story is mystery
what’s your story?
They say that history repeats itself
but history is only his story
you haven’t heard my story yet
my story is different from his story
my story is not part of history
because history repeats itself
but my story is endless it never repeats itself
why should it?
Sun Ra [1]
[1] A legendary jazz figure, born Herman Blount in 1914, moved to his spiritual home, to the planet of Saturn in 1993. In between he changed officially his name to Sun Ra, in 1952.
