Cooking Red Thai Curry With The Howling Wolf

Yesterday in class we were talking about our 'inner critic'. This is the voice in our head that tells us we are not good enough or we should be doing this and not doing that. The tutor then produced four small boxes of animal figures and asked us to pick animals that signified our inner critic. I was in my element. It is exactly these kind of creative exercises that gets me excited. She then asked us to pick an animal that signified the 'victim' part of ourselves. So, for my inner critic I picked out a ram and a shark. I chose the ram as I see it headbutting a wall incessantly and not giving up, which is what my inner critic is like. I also picked a shark because the attacks from my inner critic are so vicious and nasty. I chose a meercat to represent my victim. At first I thought I was choosing the meercat because I like them so much but when I thought about how the meercat acts I realised that is how my victim feels when it's being attacked. Meercats are always on the lookout. They are anxious and skittish. After we discussed the animals we'd chosen and why we'd chosen them we took a tea break. When we came back our tutor asked us to then choose an animal to represent our 'adult' voice. An animal that could challenge our critic and protect our victim. I had already spied the wolf in the box earlier and I knew it was my 'adult' side. There were two wolves though and I chose the howling wolf.

I explained to the class that I chose the wolf because the noise of it's howling would drown out the noise of the inner critics voice. The tutor then asked me what howling meant to me. I said that although it's traditionally linked to insanity I view howling as a sign of freedom. Or, as a release of something painful. There will always be an intrinsic link between the moon and insanity. But if you read Paulo Coelho's book Veronica Decides To Die you are faced with the question, is it really the people locked up in asylums who are the mental ones, or is it the rest of society who live by a rigid set of codes and practices that are crazy? People fear the unknown. Lunatics leap into the unknown. Nobody's right or wrong we're all just different but we all deserve the same respect. I think I should probably end this topic now before I go full force into a sociological discussion about the stigma of mental illness. Keep that one for another day!