Come Back to Your Task
Plato argued that we are born “knowing,” but the abrasions of daily life wear it away. We have all heard the story of the three-year-old confronting her newborn sibling, saying, “Tell me what it was like; I am forgetting already.” The memory of the cloudless, umbilical Eden is already fading in the mind’s eye. Once, reading an ancient Chinese text, I came across the image of “the man who lives in the House of Self-Collection.” The image hit me with the shock of recognition, for I so often think on the corrosive costs of daily life, the multiple claims upon us, and the commitments legitimate and imposed, which only the metaphor of unraveling can summarize.
Jung observed that in virtually every case he attended, the person knew from the beginning what his or her task was. The presenting neurosis, the blockage, the obstacles that obscure the task are only the surface distractions from the implicit intimidation of really knowing what is right for us. But something within always does know what is right for us and what is wrong. We know as children, and what we know then gets overruled by the powers and principalities of the world and the need to fit in somehow.
Further, Jung pointed out that even our neuroses, our twists, turns, and permutations of soul, are efforts to heal something felt amiss. But in these reflexively arranged defenses against our hurts, we set up other consequences, other collateral damage. Anesthetizing oneself to the world is understandable, avoidance is strategic, and complicity is comforting, but each sets in motion an inauthentic response to the challenges of life. If we arrive at these places of momentary respite, something nags from within still, for adaptation is not resolution and flight from discord is not meaning. Jung nailed it: “A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not yet discovered its meaning.”1 Notice that he does not rule out suffering, for suffering, as the medieval adage had it, “is the fastest horse to completion.”
Often the flight from suffering leads to a trivialized life, a distracted life, an anesthetized life. The clear implication of Jung’s position is that working one’s way through to meaning — that is, to an enlarged view of one’s dilemma and perhaps an enlarged view of one’s own summons — can lead one through the valley of the shadow. He adds, “Among my patients, from many countries, all of them educated persons, there is a considerable number who came to see me not because they were suffering from a neurosis but because they could find no meaning in their lives or were torturing themselves with questions which neither our philosophy nor our religion could answer.”2
I cannot count the times someone has said in the midst of analysis or a workshop, “I know I should . . . (fill in the blank).” How is it we can know and not carry through? This dilemma goes back to the chapter on stuckness for sure, and we need to remember that in those blockages, we are succumbing to an archaic anxiety of some sort: we fear we will be ridiculed, left alone, fall on our face, and so on. We all have those fears, yet deep within is that call again, that summons. How many talents have been neglected, opportunities aborted, risks rationalized away? Each one of those moments of postponement, rationalization, and deflection was when we turned our back on our own soul.
What, then, is our task? Two things: individuation and overcoming the specific obstacles the fates have placed on our path.
First, individuation — what is meant by that term? Too often the word seems to offer license to narcissism and, at best, seems a pathway to selfish self-interest over the needs of others. What Jung meant by the term is quite contradictory to these presumptions. Individuation is a religious summons, the flight from which leads to pathologies of all sorts — distorted relationships, anesthetizing or distracting behaviors that lead to a narrowing path, or a chronic dis-ease, the cure to which is never found in medications, new relationships, or new pursuits. As long as one is running from one’s own soul, no achievement, no compromise, no accommodation will satisfy. Individuation is in fact service, but service to what?
When I was writing my book What Matters Most, the first thing that came to my mind, apart from the conventional answers of family, friends, and good work, was that one’s life not be governed by fear. Fear is unavoidable, but a life in which fear calls the shots is one that results in terrible malformations of the soul. As we know, nature always demands its due, and so the soul, which is our metaphor for the fact that we are that meaning-seeking and meaning-creating animal, demands respect. I cannot tell you how many good folks have told me that they never wanted to be in their particular profession, but it pleased the parents, made them feel legitimate, or offered financial security. An equal number have said as much regarding their relational commitments, including, “The invitations were already sent out,” “We had sunk too much money in the event to back out,” and so on. Looking back on our lives, we may recognize many critical choices were driven by fears — fear of disappointing others, fear of embarrassment, fear of loss of family consensus, and so on. And often such fears made decisions for us, often to be unraveled over years of conflict, depression, anger, and further dithering.
Sooner or later our psyche weighs in with its reports because something inside is hurting, and the usual efforts to remove the hurt have failed. Naturally, a person would like to believe that the therapist possesses magic, or at least a multistep plan for the resolution of the hurt. Actually, therapists have only one plan, with many variations of course — namely, the challenge to live with the reality of one’s own soul. How many times have I asked, “What do you think has produced this discord within you? Do you think your psyche is trying to tell you something by withdrawing its approval and support of where ego consciousness invests its energies?” These provocative questions are rhetorical tools to turn a person back on his or her own resources.
To step out into our lives, to come back to the task of becoming who we really are when not defined by roles, categories, or the expectations of others, is a most daunting summons. To counter the fear of stepping into the world as ourselves, I have often invoked that old chestnut: “How will you feel if conscious on your deathbed that you had not been here as yourself?” No one yet has suggested that they would feel okay about that dismal prospect. That tells me that something within each of us knows what is right for us and knows when we are living in mauvaise foi, or bad faith. Our soul can manage a great deal: suffering, loss, isolation, and much more if it feels that there is purpose to the suffering. It cannot long tolerate suffering without meaning nor abide our compromises with ourselves. As Jung pointed out, the smallest of things with meaning is infinitely greater than things without meaning. And meaning is defined by our souls, not our culture.
Coming back to our task also means that we have to show up as we are, adding our small but critically important piece to the mysterious puzzle of life. And we have to do it in the face of whatever obstacles the fates, the whimsical gods, or pernicious people in our histories have brought us. In other words, the meaning of our life will be a direct function of the degree to which we became more nearly ourselves, showed up as best we could in the face of the difficulties that life presented.
There is often a perverse satisfaction in self-sabotage, of slipping into our life-denying self-images, of turning away when the invitation is large, psychologically speaking. In those moments, we are asked to return to our task, the task of being who we are. So simple, so difficult, so profound. And that is our gift to the world, not as self-aggrandizement, not as self-inflation, but as the simple service to the soul. What can be more important in our journey, more intimidating, and more compelling than honoring the soul in this humbling way? While fate is often harsh and delimiting, most of us lack this excuse. We forget our task, our responsibility to our talents, to our interests, and to our unique perspectives on the world because it is easier to do so. We forget, simply forget. Yet something in us remembers and protests. So we dismiss the protests, the troubling dream, the fear that awakens us at three in the morning. We run from ourselves to places of security, of comfort, to the fantasy of fitting in.
I do not judge such a person, for I am one on many days, yet other days I face the fears, the lack of permission, and the intimidating largeness of it all, and show up as best I can. I cannot now say that I do not know, that I am ignorant or uninformed, nor can you anymore. We have made enough excuses in our lives, offered enough rationalizations, and evinced enough evasions, but something inside persists, shows up, troubles sleep, and asks more of us — and sooner or later we all have an appointment with our soul. Whether we show up, remember the divine task, remains to be seen.