TONY BATES MIND MOVES "He did not know how long he sat there or what was happening to him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he stood up slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long deep breath and wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and released in him, very quietly. "What is it?" he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over his forehead. "I almost feel as if - I were alive!"(Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden)
TO REVISIT and relive a favourite childhood experience, and find that it still has the power to move and amaze you, has to be one of life's thrills. This happened for me recently when I came across an old copy of The Secret Garden. But what I didn't expect was how this heart-warming story spoke to me in a much deeper way than it had before. And showed me something about what it takes for us humans to come alive.
As the story opens, we are introduced to a small number of characters, each of whom has been crippled in their own particular way by traumas they have endured. There is a feeling of deadness that pervades their lives and surrounds the Gothic manor in which they live.
Mary Lennox, a 10-year-old girl, neglected by her parents, and recently bereaved of both of them, starts out with the label of being "spoilt" and "horrid". She is shipped off to her depressed uncle in Misselthwaite Manor, Archibald Craven, whose life has been frozen since his wife died giving birth to their son Colin. He coped with his bereavement by shutting his son away in an upper room, where he was shamefully hidden from the world and treated by the household staff as chronically disabled.
Colin, it seems to me, represents that part of each of us that we have given up on. A piece of our heart that we have shut away. Maybe something that was broken and that we don't believe can ever be fixed. And because it remains hidden from the world, it never gets the chance to come into the light, where it can be worked with and healed.
In disowning his son, Archibald Craven condemns himself to a miserable depression, from which he does not escape for the next 10 years. "When he travelled about, darkness so brooded over him that the sight of him was a wrong done to other people because it was as if he poisoned the air about him with gloom."
The garden at the centre of this story has also been locked away to wither and die, because it belonged to his wife. Like each of the humans in this story, it looks to be dead, but of course all it needs is time, care and patience.
This story is centrally about the possibilities of transformation in all our lives. Transformation is gradually achieved as key elements within this eco-system are mobilised.
The children at the heart of this tale show a fierce determination to break free of the constricted stories that the adults imposed on them. Mary finds her way into the garden and begins to nurture it back to life. This contact with nature in turn nurtures her spirit back to life. Colin becomes a part of this secret project and discovers in himself the will to live.
Archibald is the last person to come to the party. In many ways this story is mostly about him, as his victory is hardest won. Because his recovery from the sleep of depression requires that he let go the constricted narrative to which his life has been wedded. And risk being hurt in this way once again.
His moment of liberation, quoted in the opening piece above, came to him also from his contact with nature. Walking through a forest in Austria, he stopped by a mountain stream and began to pay attention to, as though seeing them for the first time ever, a bunch of forget-me-knots overhanging its banks.
And as he did, he began to remember who he was. He remembered his son, and for the first time in his life, allowed himself to feel love for this sickly child. And in that moment he resolved to return home and risk relating to this boy, whatever the consequences.
It would be a grave mistake to write this book off as merely a children's story. It is a meditation on the potential of humans to unfreeze those parts of themselves that have become paralysed by hurt and fear. It also illustrates how when we move into a freer place within ourselves, it becomes possible for those around us to become freer in themselves.
• Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie)
