My MSN feed brings up some interesting stuff.. Today is about supposed names Camilla has used for Meghan Markle I did not really care to read about it much but some of terms used are “minx” and “self seeking trouble maker.” Well I am a fan of minx to be honest and after all what better way is there to erase a person than to label, judge, shame or name call? I know we all do it. I am not immune either at times, but the names and judgements I use say more about me than the other person in the long run. As the so called “loose cannon” in my family I know what it is to be on the receiving end of this kind of shit.. As a favorite saying from AA says “”when I point the finger at you there are three other fingers pointing back at me.
I am also learning a lot about ego and defenses that cover over abject childhood pain from the earlier chapters of Tony McAleer’s book The Cure for Hate : A Former White Supermasist’s Journey from Vigilent Extremeism to Radical Compassion. Tony was bullied and isolated as a child in boarding school and also carried lot of the Irish rage from a violent background that rose out of English oppression and the Celtic reaction to it.. He charts the journey from bullied to bully with incisive honesty in those first three chapters of the book.. He admits what he covered over was the vulnerable side of himself and explains how in finding violent ways to take back power he convinced himself for a time he had some, but it was both at the expense of others and profound detriment to his own humanity. In a way you could say he did claim control and power for a time but eventually his defenses fell away and of course, alcohol fuelled so much of his own ignorance, sadism and violence.. I am not far enough into the book to shed light on his transformation but I believe it came about from becoming a parent himself and seeing the exquisite vulnerability in his own daughter when he finally became a father.
Back to the subject of name calling, what a way not to empathize or take a view of compassion, radical or otherwise? And as Carl Jung so famously said “Thinking is difficult, that is why most people judge.” The antidote to that is both compassion and a less on display virtue in our modern society, that of mercy.. There is a beautiful chapter on mercy in Wayne Mueller’s book The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood.
I do not know if Camilla is wanting to point poisoned barbs at Meghan to take her down, after all both she and Harry have tried to call out things in the palace and monarchy that Diana found it impossible to do completely before her ill fated death and Camilla played a huge part in her demise. We should be mindful when we see someone trying to reduce another person’s humanity through any kind of diagnosis, label or name.. There is a saying that to name an emotion gives you some kind of power over it and that is true but what I am speaking about here is how in our emotionally alexythymic culture that is not very common and then the level of name calling does nothing else but reveal the shallowness of another person’s take on a complex human reality. And their own soliptic self centered narcissism.
Emerging From The Dark Night 