Time for spirituality – column

If a vague acquaintance starts talking about his problems immediately after the first meeting, then you should brace yourself. The story started well: acquaintance had met The Woman Of His Life. On the negative side: now that fairy completely freaks out at the mere mention of the word motorcycle. That offended my acquaintance, who has been navigating on two wheels for about twenty years...

However, an autumn and a winter do help to keep the 'M-word' somewhat below the horizon. Until spring gently broke out. The motorcycles surfaced again and the tension in the relationship suddenly took on a very negative connotation. When I asked why his princess dream was so strongly against motorcycling, there was no unanimous answer. His Princess was highly sensitive and spiritual and experienced that riding a motorcycle was not good. As boys among ourselves, we of course know that the 'feeling' of a member of the more pleasantly shaped sex cannot be guided by trivialities such as facts and arguments. To put a stop to the conversation about all those emotions, I advised my gloomy acquaintance to switch to the feminine side. As in, just use understanding and emotions.

And for this he could call on another friend: Elmer Hendrix. Elmer is a former kickboxing teacher and now a senior piping engineer. There is little softness about that. But he found his soft side in the teachings of a certain Bert Hellinger. He is the inventor of a type of psychotherapy that is said to be rigorous and highly effective. The approach is that all the misery you carry in your life is actually based on misery from the past. And that can go back generations. I know a few people I take seriously and who have benefited enormously from it. This teaching therefore seemed to me to be a good way to get rid of my conversation partner's love problems. And hey, what if I could get Elmer a customer with it? Because Elmer also does family constellations.

A month or so later a motorcycle turned onto the garage path. The passenger stepped down smoothly, took off her helmet and shook her hair loose. The rider also dismounted and unhelmed himself. From under the helmet came a deeply experienced smile that you usually only see from hardcore EO members on their day. We were greeted warmly and introduced to the pillion passenger a.k.a. Roeland's Great Love. Over coffee we specifically asked for text and explanation. In short, the story was that all of Sandra's negative emotions were apparently a burden from a few generations ago and that her disgust for motorcycling was only a projection of that.

This much had become clear during the family constellation, she had then coughed up a kind of enormous emotional vomit and said goodbye to the old, transferred pain. She now saw motorcycling for what it is: one of the more important incidents in Roeland's life, but she could live with that.

Roeland himself kept grinning dazedly and proudly and happily said that the family setup had really changed his Lief. I suggested that he should also do a family constellation like that. To get rid of that stupid motorcycling thing. I made that tip out of my own interest, because I have had my eye on his motorcycle for a long time. But I threw my reference to Elmer into my own windows. Was a bit stupid!