This is unusual. Filmed Fall of 2019. This 30 minutes of footage is pretty much uncut. Insights, admissions and all. It is deeply reflective and revealing of where this work is now to be pointed, and the contrarian nature of life and purpose finding you rather than you heading off to find it.
The ability to see through the eyes of another holds the key to empathy, and I mean ‘see’ in its most expansive of definitions. And such empathy exists as a quality that might transform the complexion of everything. This film reveals the experience of a world through the eyes of paranoid schizophrenia.
Imagine your life, or your child’s life following its course and then an abrupt and brutal turn. The sudden onset of Schizophrenia. A violent shock to what was. A loss. At a loss. And a soul rendered desolate and alone.
One man sought out those who would challenge his view on the world. Because he knew that he could never know for certain. Another man sought out the company of those who held tight to his same view.
I listened to the Members of the Inner View Community. And to myself. And to the sky above the horizon. And this is what I heard of what we want. Of what this is. Of what ‘Us’ is here for. I wrote it down as a piece entitled ‘I Want This’.
‘I can’t give you anything that you don’t already have.’ This statement is important, and this podcast explores this and the uncomfortable edges that surround it. If the work of Soul Biographies is interesting to you, this delves deeply into its very nature.
“What I thought was breaking me wasn’t breaking me at all. It was preparing me for this. For this gratitude.” Unchecked humanity and a raw truth for so many of us held in the words and the spaces of these few minutes.
‘It is like a miracle. I’ve got a son back that I thought I’d lost. We’re probably closer now than we’ve ever been but it did start in a difficult place.’ A film of hope and light from a seemingly dark and endless place.
In the complex landscape of Schizophrenia, I imagine Compassionate Care should not be absent. Care that is unconditional. Care that is full of hope and of possibility.
‘Perhaps the lives of those close to us cry out for us to take notice of our own.’ This is a film about family. And the challenge and opportunity of unconditional acceptance.