GASi President

I’ve just turned 70 – three score years and ten. I’ve been telling everyone, so I thought I should tell you, as well. I’ve had an unfamiliar sense of feeling my age, in a way that suggests that I’d failed to do so, before. The shock of it is that it comes as a shock – something not faced that should have been there all along.

The past is no less formless than it always was – but the future has acquired a sharper outline.  Yet, although this is partly true, there is little sense of urgency. I meet good health with the astonishment of being here. I don’t take it for granted – I may revel in it. None of the daily joys is free of sadness and none of the annoyances without the gratification of encountering it.

I wonder about the role of conviction in the process of surviving.  We may keep one another alive through remembering each other, but do we also keep ourselves alive by rehearsing what we believe in? In order to stay in the world, do I need to hold on to something that is good and true? I suppose that is why our ‘positions’ are so important to us; in maintaining them, we sustain the spaces in which we live.

And I suppose that our different and combined faiths in Group Analysis have such a role in many of our lives. They greatly influence our ability to face our futures, even when these begin to close in on us.

David Glyn
dearjee@gmail.com