DEAR YOGESHREE
The last letter you received was the first in a two part series on looking for meaning in acting out behaviour in young persons. Lebo's dramatic acting out at his dying mother's bedside was described as an incident ,. This letter is designed to go behind the the acting out behaviour to get some kind of insight into Lebo's world view.
Lebo's story continues as a type of parable
There was once a small boy, the last in a family of already grown brothers and sisters. His mother didn't really want this child from the time of conception. Worn out and tired, struggling to make ends meet and well past child rearing, she would make Lebo the responsibility of the other siblings.
Lebo soon learnt that he was resented and wasn't really wanted by them also. He was a burden to everyone.He could say or do nothing, just his being there was enough for them to wish him away.It didn't take long for Lebo to get the message that the family wished that he would disappear into thin air - and they did. he got into a way of following people wherever they went until they shooed him off.He would get into their belongings and absorbed their possessions into his head until he couldn't easily separate what people owned from who they were. He thought that if he had something of theirs he had something of them as persons. Then peo-ple felt stripped and invaded and they shut him out.
"The world"' Lebo thought was a place where people want others out of their lives, .... especially me.>. The world WANT people to disappear into thin air, not exist in theit lives" And because Lebo believed this, it was true.
But Lebo believed also that it should not be like this, " God did not have it mind that the world should be like this" he would think. " in God's world people love each other unconditionally, people are warm to one-another, understand each other and are real end genuine about it... but the world is not like that at all. Somewhere deep down where he could not see, Lebo had pictures, dreams, visions of a conflict he did not understand.
"people need a wake-up call, they should hear needs and hopes, not just wish people away: he would hear whispered . He was due something of the generosity he vaguely knew in blurred images.
He stole money from his mother, and from his brothers and sisters and from the neighbouhood and they wished he would disappear. So, he did...... into the streets of the big city. Sometimes into the barred caverns of the city jail.
One day Lebo got news that his mother was dying in his hometown hospital.
Now the truth that he had been masking for long moments with cough syrup and glue became clear again. He had known it all along . Now the world and his brothers ans sisters were wishing his mother away. Like him it was now her turn. They now wanted HER out of their lives.
But God never intended it to be like this. Mother needs a wake-up call. They must now all hear what has never been said.
When Lebo came to her bedside, he saw that it had all gone too far. God never intended it to be like this. So,he took off his clothes and naked , like the truth, he stripped the world from God's intended creation and screamed at her to get up and come with him into the big city
Security guards did exactly what Lebo knew . They reinforced for him his view of the world.... the world wants you OUT.. the world and his family want you to disappear.... see lebo was right all along. They told him he must never come there to be with his mother again. The ultimate rejection.
At the communion service in the big city that week, Lebo sobbed, without words,, just sobbed.
A Nevajo medicine man once said to Carl Jung ;
" the most important thing I have ever learnt from my grandmother was that there is a part of the mind we really know nothing about and that it is the part that is most important in whether we become sick or remain well."
Freud, Jung Klein and more recently R.D.Laing for example all worked in settings where "material from the deeper, more archaic layers of the unconsciousness is uppermost and where the ego is to a large extent overwhelmed" (Buhrmann 1984)
In child and youth care we are sometimes thrust into situations where this happens. We come face to face with the neon signs and the colours of the rainbow. Maybe we also have a valuable contribution to make in making meaning in those times when children's behaviour is at its worst, when they are flickering candle flames, whispering or shouting melodic disharmony or simple tunes or pounding pyrotechnics.
Love
Barrie
Buhrmann Vera. H , Living in Two Worlds - communication between a white healer and her black counterparts. Human and Rousseau. Pretoria& Cape Town 1984.
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