Adam Blatner

I read on a listserve news item of a colleague doing a workshop titled, "Where Do I Belong?"  I wrote an email to my professional colleagues and, before erasing it, it occurred to me that it applied to lots of folks. I googled “The world needs you” and found many entries. Good! So what if this is an idea whose time has come. I’d like to see monthly assemblies in every high school, with a big ol’ banner that says, “The World Needs You” hung across the front, and a speaker from the community who wants to respond to giving a sort of sermon on this theme—and the speaker may not be at all religious per se!—because kids need to be told, everyone needs to be reminded of this uplifting theme.

I wrote on the email: You belong in the ranks of the cultural creatives, those seeking to help promote the transformation of consciousness on this planet. We’re at a tipping point of learning how to re-integrate the mythic and the right-brain, the holistic and the positive (faith-filled), the compassionate and excited!  These, plus play, imagination, and intuition have been largely stifled in the mainstream Western educational process. (This was written to my colleagues who are interested in psychodrama.) You belong beyond the context of therapy. Sure, that, too, but more, in education, in social action, in many spheres of life. You belong with all practitioners of applied drama; with drama and theatre in education; the arts and expressive arts therapies; imagination-development and spontaneity development for those who imagine they are healthy, but still, could grow more; and with outreach programs in colleges, continuing education programs of all sorts.

You belong with those who offer tools to help people imagine and improvise, when much of our culture’s background has served to stifle these human potentials. My latest thing is to encourage psychodrama to rise above its focus and become a special interest group within a larger umbrella that looks at promoting creativity in all its forms, spiritually, socially, culturally, etc. That would go for us in the applied arts therapies, too. Hooray for you!

Re-reading this email message, I decided to post it—with some modifications, it could apply to many people in many fields. Take it and change the words so that you give yourself an exhortation and three cheers!