Diane Anderson Harvey, Ph.D.
There are moments in life when we are knocked off our usual balance, our normalcy, and from that vantage point we can view life in general, and our own lives in particular, at a different level.
This is a simple story about one person’s decision to draw out the best from a difficult experience and to use a dramatic break in the regular routine of life as a learning experience about elevating one’s life. The story is based upon a surgical experience and a thinker’s response to it. The approach also would apply to other experiences like losses of jobs, deaths of loved ones, burning down of houses, spousal affairs, children’s serious illnesses, economic setbacks and any other fracture of the usual activities of life.
If the opportunity to elevate your life through creative response to trauma comes to you, the reader, you might respond through different creative endeavors, by painting, perhaps, or composing, or dancing, or building things, or working, or gardening. The message, however, is still the same: step into the experience, be assured that there is meaning in it for you, ask what you can learn from it, and know that your life will be deepened by both the experience and your response to it.
This is a book about responding to unexpected, unusual, and traumatic experiences in life.
Another personal story with deep philosophical insight from Dr. Diane Harvey, the author of DOCTOR, PATIENT, OBJECT, THING: A Story about a Surgeon and a Teacher.
Diane Harvey holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University and is Emeritus Professor and Dean of Menlo College, a small private college in Northern California. She is an award-winning teacher who has created many unique courses in Philosophy, Psychology, and the Humanities. Professor Harvey is an experienced motivational speaker, known for her talent for simplifying and personalizing the big philosophical issues and introducing them through stories.
Currently Dr. Harvey is president of Life Journey Seminars which mentors individuals in small group settings and hosts philosophical salons focusing on ethical, political, and social issues.
Diane Harvey lives in Northern California with her husband. They have two adult sons. Besides her teaching and writing, Professor Harvey enjoys skiing, scuba diving, traveling, family, and all of the family pets.
I CAN’T GO BACK
“I can’t go back!” I heard it loud and clear. It was not a voice from outside, but it was not my voice either. It was not just my thoughts. It was knowledge that I had intuited somehow. It was a command.
It wasn’t the whiney “I just can’t do it” that we all have heard, or even expressed, in situations when someone has been stretched beyond his or her capacity or endurance and wants to give up.
“One more step,” we respond then, or “One more time.” “You can do it, just try. I will walk with you; I will wait with you, while you try. I know you can do it. One more step, one more time, one more try, then we will stop and rest for a while.”
It was not that “I can’t.”
I did not want to give up on anything.
Nor was it the “I can’t go back” that implies I did not know how to get back.
I knew.
Neither was it the “I can’t go back” that suggests going back would be embarrassing.
I had nothing to be embarrassed about.
It was the “I can’t go back” of warning.
There was danger in going back. Although the obvious interpretation would be one that warned against going back to a life or environment that had led to the life-threatening disease and subsequent pulmonary emboli that had been part of my life a few weeks earlier, that was not the warning that I heard. Going back, indeed, would be a threat to my life, but not to my life as it was, rather to my life as it could be.
This was the last call: Go back and you will lose your life as it could be.
Nothing more, nothing about what to do next: What about promises? What about commitments? What about responsibilities? What about loyalty? And if none of those: What about prudence? Nothing. No more intuition, just “I can’t go back.” That was probably the strongest intuition that I had ever had in my life. If I followed it, my entire life would change.
