Let us Question Our Realities

When I was an art therapist, I worked for about 5 years with the criminally insane. These were people who had committed crimes and who were evaluated to be either “not fit to stand trial” because of their mental state or “guilty by reason of insanity” because they were suffering from psychoses caused by different types of disease. Often times the people were indigents, out on the street, doing drugs that worsened their mental states. Regardless of the reason, the people were housed in locked facilities and I provided art therapy as an adjunct treatment and would share the drawings and paintings with the treatment teams to shed light on the person’s disabilities. The artwork also gave the person/group a chance to communicate nonverbally.

This was a dark, dark world. Sharing 8-10 hours a day with these people was hard on the soul.

The important thing about this reality in which I lived is that I did not understand the relevance of my experiences while I was living the reality. I could not observe my reality as being any different from anyone else’s reality. The fact that I watched the disabled scream, cry, try to harm others, talk to themselves, hit me, spit on me and other staff and often times be restrained in an isolation room seemed normal to my reality. The fact that many of the staff started acting out by playing power trips and that my immediate supervisor had all of his “subordinate” females cow-towing to his sexual harassment (except me--I sued him), seemed awfully depressing to me but I accepted this reality as being the only reality.

MY POINT is that when you are in any certain reality and experiencing certain things, THAT will be YOUR REALITY. You often times will not question it because you know no different.

WHY SHOULD WE NOT QUESTION OUR REALITIES? Why should we feel limited to the reality in which we live – globally? Just because the entire planet seems to accept certain things like war, wealth, greed, famine, etc. does not mean that this has to be so. Our planet is only one part of everything else – why should we not look to the seemingly unknown to seek enlightenment about ways to improve our global reality?