What Will We Be Like?
From “Open Question Evening in Copenhagen,” on pages 46 to 49 of Start Over Every Morning
Question: What will we be like when we have re-emerged from distress?
Harvey Jackins*: I’m glad you asked that. I can give you a general picture, I think, because this is the direction people move in as they discharge.
You will wake up in the mornings like you did when you were a child on the first day of summer. “Hah! The world is out there, waiting for me! I can’t wait to get the grass between my bare toes.” You will have lots of things waiting for you to do, that you want to do. And it will be fun to decide which you’re going to do first. Because you’ll know you have all the time in the world, there’ll be no feeling of being rushed or hurried. You will look forward to being with people you love and who you know love you.
You will enjoy finishing some work that is in progress or taking a further step with it. And you will be continually learning something new. If you already play the piano well, you’ll start the zither. You’ll go to the library every once in a while and look for all the books that you never thought of reading and start something completely new.
You will not only be thinking of how to keep your dishes washed and your lawn mowed just right, but, without fear or worry, you’ll be planning how to eliminate all nuclear arms from the world. You’ll plan how to organize support groups and classes and various other structures around you, so that you can lead other people in the same direction. You will plan on what kind of a letter of introduction to write to the prime minister before you go talk to him personally. You’ll be figuring out how to get all the political parties to agree on one thing, which is no more armaments. You will walk down the street with an expression on your face such that everybody who passes wishes they knew you.
We won’t be able to be intimidated. Nothing will intimidate us. We’ll know that we have complete power. We’ll never forget that we have complete freedom of decision. We’ll never blame ourselves or anyone else. We’ll see the worst situation as simply a situation in which something needs to be fixed, not as something we have to get upset about. Does that make sense?
*Harvey Jackins was the founder and first International Reference Person of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities.