by Dr. David, Editor / Publisher

Veronica was my girlfriend. Now she's my best friend. She's witchy, in the best sense of the word, highly intuitive. In her home country of Chile she was famous for her readings of the Tarot.

Still, despite her encouragement, I didn't want to go to the Family Constellation session that would be at her house last Sunday. But waking up that Father's Day morning, I had no good reason for not attending the 11am gathering. Plus, I was curious about the fear I felt that morning towards exploring my relationship with my father, as Vero suggested I should do there.

So, at ten of 11:00, I wet my tee-shirt (evaporative cooling) and pedaled off on my bicycle. Los Locos was already in full over-amplified mayhem along the Ancha and Salida a Celaya, so I took an alternate route, parallel on the back street out past the panteón (graveyard), crossing up into Colonia Allende closer to the beginning of the parade, where there were still gaps between the troupes of dancers.

Human knowledge doubles faster and faster. In 1900 it happened every 100 years. In 1945 it was 25 years. Now it's every 12 months. With the help of the internet, we are heading towards every 12 hours.

They've discovered a lot about our bodies since I graduated medical school 40 years ago. The human appendix was once thought to be a mistake, a little, pinkie-sized, vestigial, dead-end piece of intestine, only good for life-threatening inflammations. But, by my time, we understood that it is a major lymphatic organ, a significant part of our immune system.

Today, medical science still regards our sinuses with a similar disdain. Their only purpose seems to be to help us hum. Their significant downside is that their passageways are prone to infection. Esoteric speculation as to the purpose of the sinuses focuses on them as chambers of resonance, whose vibrations are passed along to the brain.

I don't know about that, but I like feeling my sinuses, around and over my eyes. I especially delight in the way they feel after I've had a good cry. It's a very pleasant association I make with emotional relief. My eyes feel relaxed, my vision renewed.

I didn't have a good cry during my section of Sunday's constellation, regarding my father, but my eyes did brim with tears, and afterwards my sinuses were humming along, all by themselves.

One is advised not to speak about the insights one gains from the session for two weeks, to let those insights mature. I will, however, share a vision I had after my session there still in Veronica's spacious living room that day.

It struck me that we are like paleontologists trying to reconstruct the whole from the pieces that we have. The actual fossil appears black in their models, and the reconstruction, plaster as it is, shows in white.

I think we humans do something very similar in piecing together our realities. We start with a fragment, and imagine the whole. Someone says something, and we fill in the back story, doing our best to interpret the meaning of and motive behind their statement. The child experiences some pleasant or traumatic encounter and, guessing the missing pieces, shapes a worldview.

This process is obviously flawed. How can I know what your motive is in critiquing me? How can the immature child conceptualize the familial inheritance, the ancestral traumas that give rise to his personal suffering? If we are honest, and brave, we acknowledge these flaws. When new evidence is found, we ought to revise our models of reality. This is good science, adapting our models when new discoveries are made, when a new piece of fossil is unearthed.

Up at Veronica's fossils were an afterthought. My first vision was something like rafts on a lake, floating into place, adding or exchanging one for another, forming the "whole" that is our being. Is this a better fit than what I currently have in the gap? Is that the missing piece I've been hoping for? Does this provide me with a better model, a better explanation?

Dad
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It struck me then that this, at least in part, accounts for our sociability, our friendships and loves. The lover or friend provides us with something we are lacking, something that makes life richer or work better. There in Veronica's living room, I felt tremendous compassion for each of us playing without a full deck. I've often wondered why things don't add up in my life. How many times do we blame ourselves for not winning the game, when the cards necessary to do so, the ten, jack and ace, are absent?

Of course, we need the courage to revise our models, to let go of the dysfunction that we have cobbled together, when a healthier alternative presents itself. However useful it may have been, we have to put down the crutch in favor of a more functional leg. If we lack the courage to break apart the plaster skull in favor of a newly discovered piece of bone, desperation has a way of urging us along.

I woke up on Father's Day, felt that fear, and bravely faced it. My bicycle ride was a mythic journey, an ordeal under the hot Mexican sun, through the pandemonium of the Locos parade, up the hill of Colonia Allende. I went to commune with the spirits of the ancestors, my father and his father and my great grandfathers before them. Who wouldn't be awestruck?

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Dr. David presents Lokkal, the social network, the prettiest, most-efficient way to see San Miguel online. Our Wall shows it all. Join and add your point of view.

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