‘God, I have a problem’

I might say that – and often do - as an expression of temporary anguish. A communication that is more important to give than to receive. Or it could be a prayer. An intimate communication to an unknowable other. – yet expecting a response, a reaction of some kind.

Internet communication can be talking into the ether, not expecting a response, but I am realising more these days how it may carry an emotional message, and the usual rules of transference and counter transference apply. I used to think that emails, being autistic, get misunderstood because they are flat, and lacking depth or perspective – but the misunderstood email is, I now realise, also very much a product of projective identification.

Young people carry out their complex courtship and mating routines by texting. We are all getting used to living and working in virtual communities. I am not talking about YouTube or Second Life. There is a web hub, where Tavistock Institute social scientists and consultants are learning to talk together in a new space for them. There are experiments in internet-based group relations conferences. It all has a West Coast feel about it, which reminds this old hippy of the ‘60’s and 70s. . And indeed I see a San Francisco group have successfully developed a Buddhist sangha.

I wonder if we could learn from people who pray. I understand that people often have an informal communication with God. And I remember I have heard in particular Jewish stories full of humour about such communications.

What happens when we talk to others as if we are talking to ourselves? Or talk to ourselves, content that others may overhear. These are closed system communications in an open systems framework.

God, this is confusing. (You can decide for yourself if this is a comment or a prayer.)

What is the difference between ex- and old? I was in what they now call the Parkland Walk on New Years Day, and a young woman walking with her family said, with the voice of discovery that young people have, this is an ex-railway! I carried on walking, thinking that I would never call it an ex-railway. It is an old railway. The rails are gone, the sleepers and the clinker. There are still signs of an old platform, not much else. But in my mind it is still an old railway. There is a continuity with the past.

You may talk of an ex-wife, not an old wife. The continuity is deliberately disrupted. There is all the difference between an ex-friend and an old friend.

The young woman was using a language of discontinuity in describing the Parkland Walk. She was momentarily curious about an old identity, but her language suggested that it was not relevant to her current experience.

Nearby there is a pub called The Old Dairy. There is a pizza outlet in what used to be a bank. Old identities contribute a certain gravitas to the makeover. Or good humour at least. A public convenience has been converted to a house: it is called The Cottage.

I prefer old to ex generally speaking. It feels wrong, I admit, to talk of an old wife. I am happier to think in this instance of my first wife, as long as this does not imply a tendency to concubinage.

And I think back to the old year just gone, not as an ex-year. Without continuity it is as if we are afraid to learn, as if we have to make it up all the time, like secular creationists, according to some giant Bluffer’s Guide to the Universe.