Wise Old Grandma

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself”
Leo Tolstoy

Well last post I said how I was going to talk about what “we’re swimming towards” but  I got excited and wrote too much and decided to break it up into two parts. So here’s some stuff on life stages and I sprinkled some Jung on there. Junging it up next time.

There’s a lot that goes into my man Carl, as he kind of puts down an entirely new worldview to look at things.  I will try to slowly work through that in the coming weeks/the rest of my life, as well as figure out what things I agree with and what things I don’t, as it has been a century since the majority of his beliefs were written.  Look at Freud, he was right about his ideas of the unconscious being in control, and its effect on us, and right about sexuality being a huge part of it (especially in sexually repressed Victorian times) but wrong about it being the only part, or even the main drive. Same with all the other psychoanalysts, everyone has valid points, and disagrees with each other, but they are all smart people, their points all make sense in some form.  

Anyone reading ever take a Psychology 101 class?  There was a guy called Erik Erikson who gave us the 8 stages of development through your life span.  Well Freud and all the other psychoanalysts thought that what was important was the first 4-5 stages of life.  Jung thought that what was important was the last 2 stages of life. You know what? None of them had it fully correct.  What is important is the whole of life. They were so focused on proving they were right and others were wrong they refused to see the truth in every argument.

What Erikson did was give us tasks to get through at every stage, and each task has two poles. If you succeed you gain the positive, and if you don’t succeed you gain the negative.  How you do on each stage will affect all the remaining stages. Problem is, we so often want to be younger, or older, or anything but what stage we are. We often see only the negative part of where we are, and not realize the positives that are in the negative, or the benefits it causes outside of ourselves.  Life is only the present moment, you cannot go back any more than you can go forward, all you have is the now. That’s new age and that’s ancient philosophy and that is stuff we have heard before and that is true.

Living in the moment is something that affects life in huge ways, and when I am overwhelmed or spiraling out from depression like I’ve done in the past, it is often because I am not present, not living in the moment.  I am no guru, and it is just as hard for me to live there all the time as you (or you may be a lot better, you beautiful, enlightened wizard, you). When we try to rush a stage of life, or regress back to one, we are causing a disservice to ourselves. It is so easy to think that another stage is better, but that really is just us trying to find a reason to beat ourselves up and be unhappy about where we are.  I am not one to talk (or because of that definitely am one to talk), because I stayed stuck in adolescence for decades then tried to jump straight to being a 68 year old, spending my days drinking tea and speaking at book clubs and dream groups. I still do that though, and wouldn’t have it any other way, as I’ve taken what makes me improve myself and my life now. If trying to be like a wise old grandma is my positive pole right now, don’t hate.  

Figuring out what tasks we have for the life stage we’re in is only part of the problem.  All of those psychoanalysts had different views of what the purpose of everything was and how to go about getting to it. How do we figure out who to choose?  We will often see very smart people say conflicting things, things that oppose or don’t acknowledge the other side. Those psychoanalysts didn’t just disagree on the stage, but also what was important to strive for in life.  This is because they were all looking at in a different way. Looking from specific angles, they couldn’t see the values they were looking at everything through.

One of the most fascinating things that attracted me to Carl Jung is that he saw that things add up to make a whole. He felt that different therapies help in different ways, and what was important was you were working with your unconscious,   Now I don’t believe everything is right in some form. The idea that all truth is relative doesn’t hold water if you really think about it. However, being on the opposite side shows you a different way to look at both sides and gets you closer to the truth.  

Working with issues we often come up with conflicts trying to make a decision. Pulled in all sorts of directions,  we like to think we are just walking Walt Whitman memes. You should have contradictions! What a boring person you would be if you did not have those.  There’s a lot of parts to a whole problem. Realizing that gets you closer to the answer than anything else. You are pulled in different directions because there is a lot inside you.  Obviously, not everyone of those directions is correct, just like neither is every idea you’ve ever had consciously been right. However, the shades of grey are in everything. We can acknowledge those pulls without agonizing over a decision and we must, because the less we acknowledge them, the stronger they can pull us. Having the courage to look at different parts of yourself and acknowledge that you can have that thought and not let it define you builds you. It allows you to peer in and see how deep you might be. Deepness does not come from knocking out the tasks at every stage and making no mistakes, but from learning from those mistakes.

pics by the Gentleman