A Most Cherished Convocation

I was in Bangalore for the Convocation of our one year Counselling Program. A culmination of an year that I can say, was at one time my most difficult and yet most cherished. And true enough the ceremony captured it's essence in all it's depth and meaning, something that Parivarthan steadfastly stands for in every facet of it's course and it's presence.

That's our proud moment.

While I can pour my heart out with all that it brought up, which it did in pretty overwhelming measure, I choose to put here excerpts from the speech that Thomas gave on our behalf. He did such a brilliant job of it, that I want to preserve it for posterity.

Over to Thomas (extreme left):

"As I stand here, I am conscious of more than a passing sense of irony. Over the past year as an integral part of my training, I was encouraged,- borderline coerced I think - to use “I” language, to speak for myself, to take responsibility for my statements and not to skulk behind the group by using the collective noun. And now here I am at the culmination of a rigorous course speaking on behalf of my course mates, using “we” language and free to disperse my responsibility among the batch. Perhaps this is a pointer to the many changes that await us now.

We, the BSIC batch of 2016-17 are a group of 9 women and 3 men, a representation common enough in our field. At first sight we are an odd bunch. We suspect that oddity was carefully engineered to produce the benefits that became apparent as the course began to unfold. The age difference between the youngest of us at 35 and the oldest at 66 was over 3 decades - more than a whole generation. Our educational fields spanned among others, commerce, law, psychology, defence studies, philosophy and literature. Our qualifications ranged from a Bachelor’s degree to a Doctorate. We had amongst us professors, corporate executives, an advertising and communications professional, home makers, lawyers, a defence serviceman and a financial services executive. Some careers were beginning, some completed. There were deeply religious people, agnostics and spiritual ones. We had different orientations, hailed from different parts of India - in other words almost a microcosm of our country.

We started our course with some trepidation. And our trepidation was well founded. We found all our dearest and closest held values and beliefs under question. And we were the ones who were doing the questioning under gentle ( well, sometimes not so gentle) but relentless encouragement. 

Certainty, we painfully learned, may not be a good thing. Even worse, there was possibly (yes everything was nebulous, half glimpsed, barely perceived) no such thing as a good thing or a bad thing. An action or behaviour could be appropriate or inappropriate given the circumstances or perhaps fall somewhere in-between. 

Confusion which was now spreading like a virus was seen as a good thing. Or rather, would have been seen as a good thing if indeed there was a good thing.Which, of course there wasn’t, heightening our sense of impotent bafflement.

Had we actually come here to reprise the semantic version of the medieval debate - how many angels could dance on the head of a pin? We were also reminded of our LST days and encouraged to shift away from feeling “good” or “fine”. We could be happy or joyful or even ecstatic. Or downcast or sad or sorrowful or despondent. And indeed most of us were.

Our bafflement approached levels of outrage as no answers were forthcoming. And we took our miseries to our trainers, our personal counsellors, our group therapy coordinator, to other members of the batch - indeed to anyone at all who would listen and perhaps to many who did not.

And we learned to look within, to think, to examine, to ponder. And all the while our client work continued - sessions, transcriptions, our observations of ourselves and our clients, supervisions - dreaded supervisions - homework. A seemingly endless round of grinding and polishing our skills as counsellors in training. Plus book readings, a group project and then slowly for some and not so slowly for others, things began to fall into place.

We started to understand something about ourselves - our feelings and emotions, our beliefs and values and where these could have its origins. We began to share our viewpoints, our difficulties and fears. And here our diversity kicked in. We glimpsed a range of possibilities that we may not have considered earlier. We started to loosen some of the rigid controls that we had over our feelings and emotions. Perhaps controls that had been in place for years, maybe decades. 

We learned to trust. Not only our batchmates and others in our safe space but also the process. We had little notion of where we were heading but put our faith in the process. We learned to work together under high pressure, in stressful situations and to resolve the conflicts that this threw up. 

We learned to accept feedback from the group as well as our facilitators without becoming defensive. We started to use this feedback to work on ourselves, to observe our blocks, to understand how they held us back and the possibilities that could unfold if we set these blocks aside. We also had glimpses of the sense of freedom brought about by shedding burdens under the weight of which we had staggered for so long. 

We started to become kinder to, and more caring of, ourselves. And through this perhaps a little more empathetic to those around including our clients. We learned not to set expectations for ourselves that were so high that we were constantly struggling to meet them. We learned to ask for help. And to accept it wholeheartedly when it was given. Which it was almost always. We learned to value, to celebrate the small victories and joys and take pleasure in them.

We learned that we were really not as non judgemental as we liked to believe. And then strived to be less judgemental. And through these shared struggles we developed trust, respect, affection and even love for each other, bonds that we hope will last as long as we do.

Above all we learned to accept that it was okay to be frail, to have weaknesses, difficulties and to acknowledge them. We learned that it was okay to be human; we did not have to be superhuman. And trying to communicate the essence of that humanity, could perhaps help us to establish a bond with the clients whom we seek to help."

Thomas, once again....that was so beautifully put, and thanks for sending me the transcript, with the cheeky 'one twelfth of that is yours anyways' :)

And Amen to 'the bonds lasting as long as we do'.