Ten years ago today, I had one week left for winding up my affairs - cleaning my rented apartment, selling and disposing - before I would leave and return to Canada and Calgary on the sixteenth (16) of October. “For good?”, as my younger sister Tineke wrote on her farewell card to me. I called it a month of partings in my photo album collection of that time, now on disks.
That month, back then, was one of the most difficult and emotional times in my life and we are talking seven decades plus today. In retrospect this was not only due to the events of the forgoing years of 1999 to 2003, but was also to unprocessed emotions from 1959, when I left my one and only country for the new, unknown and giant Canada on that August the tenth (10).
The years 1999 to 2003 did turn out a reconnecting with my roots as I had said to a colleague on my retirement party. It was also a reconnection with undigested memories and emotion from my emigration time and the experiences as immigrant, none of which could be dealt with at the time at my ripe old age of twenty two (22). I had to survive first and become a Canadian! And that I did.
This above mentioned experience is what I have referred to in my incomplete essay on reincarnation, as the integration of your present life’s experiences. It is a pre-condition to acquiring the ability to recall previous life experiences, as I mention in that essay. It in turn, is a part of the overall task - as I see that - for us humans to acquire and achieve continuous conscious awareness.
Yesterday I received emails from Sybille and Adriana, who are now safely back on home ground in ‘Der Schweitz’; both emails were true to style. Sybille sent a photo of our Drumheller trip with a few lines, whereas Adriana wrote a profuse thank you, but eith a picture suite of her climbing ’Der Monch’ mountain, some years ago. This ‘Munch’ mountain forms a trio with Eiger and Jungfrau, close to Interlaken.
My parents took us there on a last whole family holiday the month before I left for Canada in 1959. We had a clear view on this conglomerate from Gsteig Willer, where we stayed in a real Swiss house, at the foot of ‘Der Schienige Platz’ mountain. I often looked at these three and even saw a little avalanche high up in the snow of either the Munch or the Jungfrau.
Memories and emotions are linked and when the emotions are not sufficiently assimilated, the memories remain unavailable for recall. This in order to prevent the ego-personality from being overwhelmed, possibly inhibiting its acquired functional ability to conduct one’s daily affairs.
This is when and where we build the walls, be it in personal lives or in geo politics. But, as we can learn from history - also personal and collective - all such walls are temporary in nature, too costly to maintain in the long run, inhibiting growth, change, adaptation and development.