Therapy is a way of transmuting human suffering and we are lucky to have it; but what did people do before therapy? They listened to their poets. Here are some examples.
“LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’ Love said, ‘You shall be he.’ ‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on Thee.’ Love took my hand and smiling did reply, ‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve.’ ‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’ ‘My dear, then I will serve.’ ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’ So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert
‘This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’
Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’, Polonius
Kathryn Mead 