Wellness Calendar: Monday 10 March

The suffering (inner) child

The selected passage below is to be found in The Letters of Ted Hughes, published by Faber.

“Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world, and the crush of circumstances.
And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet we’re likely to get a rough time, and to end up making ‘no contact’.
Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being.
That’s how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits.
And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It’s their humanity, their real individuality.
What doesn’t come out of that creature isn’t worth having.
And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears.
And yet that’s the moment it wants. That’s where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt.
That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember.”

What do you make of the late poet’s ideas?

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