The Chinese Matrix

 

Just returned from a package tour of the Dongbei (North East) region of China covering Shenyang, Dalian and Harbin. The region is rich in history being the hotspot for China, Russia and Japan conflict during the late 19th and first half of 20th century.

The local tour guide is fervently nationalistic, absolutely proud of Dongbei and totally committed in imparting the history of the region. So loyal to China and her origin that she came across as biased to the point of being sympathetic to the wrong doings of certain famous characters from Dongbei. I wasn’t surprised she is anti US and anti Japan but was amazed she spoke quite well of Russia. Thus she criticised Israel’s bombardment of Gaza but had no mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Though Russia occupied the Dongbei Region for 28 years, Russia apparently helped them to industrialise and build their manufacturing sector, uplifting the economy of the region.

I did not subscribe to a VPN which can avoid the firewall in China which blocks access to Google and YouTube. The news on TV has extensive coverage of the plight of the Palestinians. For the whole week in China I could not gather  any news of the people taken hostage by Hamas nor hear a word from the US UN representative while that of the Palestinian representative was loud and clear.

 I can understand why my tour guide is so opinionated. However what is amusing to me is the fact she recognises the strict government  vigilance the Chinese citizens are subjected to but speaks of it as a necessity for the country’s security and the common good for all. She reiterated that China has no territorial aggressive ambition and the Belt & Road was purely an economic aid initiative. Fortunately I have limited Chinese language ability to speak my doubts out loud.

At one point as I listened to her I thought about the Matrix movie. Then I remembered the remarks of the character Cypher who wants out of the real world : "Ignorance is bliss". 

Patience

 

This I heard from a talk.

Patience tends to connote a negative experience, something to endure, something to persevere while it lasts. It suggests waiting for the unpleasantness to end. Yet true patience is about accepting the experience, seeing it as it is, as part and parcel of life It is recognizing the mind's aversion and instead of thinking about having to "put up" with the situation, realize that things don't always turn out as we want them to be. That's reality.

So my encounters with a counselee calls for a lot of "patience". Initially she often gave last minute notice to cancel her appointments. Gradually she requested for more frequent sessions occasionally calling in between sessions when she was anxious over something. She wasn't making much progress plagued by low self esteem. Her living circumstances seem to be dire too and made it challenging for her to move on. For awhile 'we' seemed to be stagnating and I felt I couldn't help her much. It reached a point when I honestly wasn't looking forward to meet her.

Then I remembered a supervisor's advice that a counsellor is not expected to rescue the client but rather to guide them and much depends on their will to change. So I adopted an attitude of just doing my best and going with the flow. I decided to let her experience her own healing journey.

Counselling sessions can really be very unpredictable. Some days you prepare mentally to use certain strategies and it turns out that the client has other needs, throwing all your planning out of the window. So at the most recent session with the above client, I embraced myself to encounter her in an ultra distraught state as she had called a week earlier to share a stressful situation. Well to my utter surprise she was very eager to share what she called a "breakthrough" in that she was able to overcome her anxieties over the traumatic event in a more equanimous manner. She talked about how she has processed some of the strategies we had discussed in earlier sessions.

I guess this is what they called 'planting the seeds' and leaving them to grow in their own time.