I was thinking about therapy this morning......more specifically, what would feel therapeutic to me. I'm in the process of retraining myself to not look to food as a first step in a therapeutic process.
As is often the case, I grew curious as to the 'official' definition of therapy from my friend, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary - Eleventh Edition. After locating the word 'therapy', I was very disappointed and discouraged to read the too-short definition: Therapeutic treatment esp. of bodily, mental or behavioral disorder. Regressing to the childhood tendency to seek another answer when you don't like the first, I called upon my other good friend, my old, tattered 1962 edition of Roget's College Thesaurus, and was further miffed by the fact that it doesn't even contain the word therapy. Apparently, in 1962, the concept of therapy wasn't as widely accepted as it is today.
Don't we have many methods of personal 'therapy'? What is therapeutic to one may not be therapeutic to another. Other than food, some of my personal favorites are loud music, petting a dog (I won't go there today.), reading, being with certain friends, hearing a chord from my choir that 'rings', relaxing on the back deck of our Aqua RV while she goes full-charge, or simply sitting in my dad's old chair and watching the woods behind our condo. For others, your idea of therapy would probably be completely different from mine......as it should be. We are all individuals and if every one of us marched to the same drummer(s), life would be dull and boring.
To a certain segment of the population, though, there might be one universal type of therapy: Grandchildren. I call mine The Three Musketeers: TLV, TLV'sLB, and Princess Leia. (As a reminder, that is The Little Voice and The Little Voice's Little Brother.) My SO and I get to see TTM on a semi-regular basis - in person - but we video chat on a somewhat regular basis. Often enough that, hopefully, we remain in their young memories. I also have lots of their pictures surrounding me, in my office, so that I can look about, in any direction, and a smile spreads across my face. That's my therapy. When we video conference and chat, 'real-time', just hearing the boys' chirpy voices or Princess Leia's chuckle-laugh along with her excited screech........that's therapy......the best kind of therapy. Well, maybe that puppy.........
I hope that everyone who reads this blog today will engage in some healthy, restorative kind of therapy before turning out the lights tonight. If your therapy includes any coffee, chocolate, puppies, grandchildren or prayer, better yet.
Ancora imparo
