Somewhere To Be

In his book, “A Place for You,” the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Paul Tournier, tells of a young student with whom he had formed a deep friendship. “One day, he was sitting by my fireside,” Tournier writes, “telling me of his difficulties, of the anxiety that never left him, and which at times turned to panic. He was trying to look objectively at what was going on inside himself and to understand it. Then, as if summing up his thoughts, he looked up at me and said: ‘Basically, I’m always looking for a place-somewhere to be’.”

The lad constantly was trying to attach himself to a group or a community of some kind. Occasionally he would get the impression that at last he was “in,” part of the crowd, but such feelings quickly disappeared. All society seemed “phony” and “hypocritical” to him. He had looked to his mother and his father and his friends and his fellow students in search of inspiration but saw only…