Category Archives: Depth psychology

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HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR ARCHETYPE?

John B Rowe, PhD

 

            One way to know your archetypes is by paying attention to your bouts of depression or to your moods. Often, some image or some emotional-laden problem is crying out for attention. And as James Hillman (Re-visioning Psychology, 1997) reminds us, the voice of psyche is often first heard in our pathologies, our sufferings.

            Archetypes transcend rational thought. They are more akin to the imagination, which is why archetypes often shine through, not in what we know or think we know or want to know, but in the language of dreams – images. These images are often depicted in extreme forms – psyche’s way of saying, “Hey! Are you paying attention?”

            Not only do archetypes transcend and challenge rational thought – the language of the ego – but they speak to us in the language of opposites. For example, a dream image may present an anima image as insisting on a divorce (eg. A wife tells her husband abruptly that she wants to end the marriage); but the scene takes place with the husband sitting on a couch with his friend at the other end of the couch, providing solace and advice about what to do. The wife tells her husband she has exhausted all means she knows of to imitate the marriage of her parents, which is not anything close to what the husband wants for marriage. And then there’s a discussion between the husband and his friend about not fighting the anima’s demand but seeking a third way through marriage counseling. Opposites abound! You could say, here, that the image of “marriage counseling” is the primary form of unconscious language: presenting opposites, not for the purpose of integration – though that may, indeed, occur – but for the purpose of creativity and transcendence. By holding the tension between a marriage that feels confining versus a marriage that leans toward dissolution and freedom, is a place for the mystery of love. It is not so much a space that requires marriage manuals as much as psychic room for the imagination to consider and work with the opposites.

            A marriage based on ego is typically one based on adaptation, but also one that tends towards disassociation – repressing vital energies of the psyche for the purpose of keeping the peace or maintaining a semblance of love, which is actually closer to accommodation. Real marriage between real souls involves both love and hate, by necessity. We might re-label archetypal hate as momentary or chronic friction, relational spats, or all out warfare. But love and hate are potent forms of psychic energy that require mature adults to exert enormous strength and magical creativity in order to prevent their repression. Loss of the tension of love versus hate, can devolve into passivity, accommodation, and depression and anxiety, not to mention loss of trust that your partner is really there for you as an authentic individual, but only as an extension of themselves or some compromise manifestation of adaptive love. A divorce, then, from the point of view of psyche could represent a psychological split and a failure of imagination – a decision to forever separate love from hate, in favor of the hated marriage and a longed for freedom accomplished through destruction of the marital container.

            Archetypes, then, find their way into consciousness through our pathologies or sufferings, through imagination and non-rational creativity, through honoring and working with the tension of opposites, and through trust in the enormous energy experienced while engaging with archetypes. For example, love grows when hate is honored as a legitimate voice within psyche. And hate diminishes when it doesn’t have to squash itself. The archetype of the Self which represents cosmic, universal love and the unification of all opposites becomes the compass of a marriage, representing the Great Mother, who maintains and regulates the ecological balance of all psychic energies. You see this clearly in the myth of Psyche and Eros where Eros must descend into the Underworld in order to provide wisdom and strength and creativity so that Psyche can overcome her dark ordeals, and so become a suitable equal for Eros and their eventual marriage.

            It takes a very strong Ego to accomplish all of this. Archetypes can destroy a marriage, to stay with this example, if the Ego has not developed adequately. One of the most important functions of individual psychotherapy is to repair developmental wounds that hinder the Ego’s ability to work with archetypes. And one of the most important capacities of the an individual psychotherapist is the capacity to embody the energy of the Wise Sage, the Explorer, and the Wounded Healer in order to provide a loving container where individuals and couples can go deeper into the unconscious in order to bring up from the depths the reality of the Cosmic Self and the archetypal energies that can both deform and transform a human being. This is the work of alchemy, which requires careful tending and an ability to resist simple solutions or quick fixes in service to the individual soul as well as the soul of a marriage.

 

 

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Understanding Dream Symbolism: The Role of Maternal Imagery

Every night recently, they offer themselves to me – a beautiful woman arrives, baring her breasts. The women entice me, willingly surrendering a view of their bodies for my pleasure. What’s up with this already?

My personal trainer, Sal, with whom I work out twice a week early in the morning, is a sharp cookie. A side benefit of having someone who knows how to keep my body healthy is that we have a shared interest in psychology and dreams.

“So Sal, what do you think it means that I’ve had multiple dreams this week of women baring their breasts?
Erik doesn’t miss a beat as I apply a foam roller to my quads. “Something to do with your mother!”

What a comedian, I think, and we laugh. But he’s probably right.

“That’s what they say,” I reply. “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

My psyche of late seems to be indulging in these symbols of maternal care. When I take the time to meditate on these sensual images, they calm me more than they arouse me. I feel strangely nourished and satisfied.

I try to imagine it – mother and child at the breast. What a lovely experience it must be! The giving and receiving of warm milk, the infant’s face against the soft, smooth skin of the mother, the scent of maternal care. This primal sustenance must, for the child, feel like the taste of eternity. For whatever time it takes to fill the child’s tummy, the outcome is that there is no unmet want or need. There is only pure joy. The ultimate in transcendence, an oxytocin dream. Is this, I wonder, a child’s earliest experience of God? A thing larger than life, something felt, momentarily and with reliable regularity until the day the child grows out of it, or the mother grows weary? Whatever time it lasts, a child knows what it is like to be one with mother and one with God – mother as priestess. And when all goes well, the child learns to remain one with the Source even when she is gone – an internalized connection to her Presence even in her absence. Mother and child have become One.

I imagine that I felt that way before memory and before time and before loss. Before the arrival of words and understanding. Mother as substance and touch and smell and experience. Mother as the taste of transcendence and eternity. Mother as symbol. But because of the necessity of separating from mother, in order to grow and become an individual, those earliest desires and needs have to be relinquished and, to some great extent, grieved, never ever returned to. Never, ever again to be repeated.

And yet, we remember and we long to return, not to the past but forward to current-day sources and presences, replacing maternal nourishment and ease with suitable substitutes: relationships, religion, academics, and nature. Seeking that which satisfies ultimately and eternally. For men, certainly, women often carry the hope of transcendence through love and sexuality. A rescuing from the pain of loneliness and emptiness. The bare-breasted women in my dreams seem to be participants in healing those ancient wounds. And so, I welcome them as they welcome me.

But I welcome them not just as symbols of Mother, but also manifestations of Sophia, the feminine face of God. This was where Jung argued with Freud and his propensity for reducing all dreams to infantile sexual wish fulfillments. Jung said that our dreams are more than regressions. Dreams are also expressions of a soul’s urge to be fully alive. It is the nature of our souls to want to suck from life as much juice as it can. The unconscious doesn’t just lead us back to the past. We are also continually being drawn toward a future where life is lived with zeal, with meaning, and with purpose. When we can get out of our own way and stop making excuses for not living more fully, the psyche offers it’s reservoir of energy for our creative imaginations. A woman might help a man with this, but it is the divine Self from which he needs to drink. A woman can often point the way to the Self, the God within, but every man has to take up the challenge of living courageously and creatively. Otherwise the man simply projects on a woman a weight no woman can or should bear.

So I am happy with these dream-women who show up now and then: these angels of the night, guardians of eternity and divine love. It’s as if they are saying to me, “You’re on the right track. Keep going. Keep loving what you love and keep giving your love in whatever ways and to whomever you can.”

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Unlocking Dream Insights: Discover Hidden Aspects of Yourself

Where do they come from? These characters, images, and emotions that show up nightly in our dreams? And what purpose do they serve?

When a female acquaintance, whom I had not seen in years, showed up in a dream and nonchalantly mentioned she was closing her counseling practice for a couple of months, I was shocked. But then, as we continued our conversation, I exclaimed, “I’d love to take two months off from my counseling practice!”

I would? I wondered doubtfully when I awoke from the dream…. “Yes, I really would!”

But where had that burst of enthusiasm come from? It’s not anything that had been on my mind. I’d taken as much as two weeks off for vacation before, but never have I imagined closing up shop for two whole months! If you had suggested I take such an extended break from counseling 20-25 clients a week, I would have immediately thought you were crazy. Where would you even come up with such an idea? I can’t afford to take off that much time.

But here is this woman – a therapist I greatly respect – rising up from my past, completely out of the blue, planting a seed in my mind that immediately formed roots. I could visit Rome for a week, then drop down into Florence or Barcelona or go over to Greece. Or I could plan a visit to my favorite ocean village, Ocracoke, where I could read, write, ride my bike, and walk my dog while getting my fill of scrumptious seafood. Or go camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Or all of the above!

The obvious conclusion is that there is a person inside of me whom I forget exists, until a character in a dream wakes him up.  Someone who is capable of challenging my daytime self-image and habitual routines. He can turn my life upside down, yet he also wants to make of my life an adventure. At 71 years of age, there’s only so much time left to visit places I want to see and to do things I’d like to do outside of the metronome-like schedule of work and the rather mundane rhythms and rituals of life.

Who is he, this guy who is usually asleep? A risk taker, for sure. Edgy, spontaneous, fun, and a little nuts, this alternative version of myself. But imminently likable, this fellow. He would take off to Rome, for example, not for a quick tour of all the usual sites. But a languishing, sinking into, and savoring of the rich and glorious culture, the architecture, and the tastes and aromas of Italy; deep dives into ancient stories that were formative for Western civilization, along with ample space for wandering and experiencing whatever wants to be discovered. This unknown guy would be a blast to travel with. The contagion of his effervescent energy is palpable.

But then, what about her, the woman in my dream. Who is she and where does she come from?

Jungian psychology posits the notion of archetypal patterns of behavior and energies that are universal – they appear in the consciousness of every culture and civilization. Archetypes aid and influence our mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. They show up in dreams, such as the archetype of Healer or the Divine Feminine, embodied in the quite human image of my female friend inspiring me to tap into her kind of energy. Archetypal energy – say, the energy of adventure or rejuvenation or, in Tarot, “the Fool” – might be thought of as precious ore lying buried in our depths. Indeed, maybe that’s what we are, really – alchemical mixtures of necessary but yet-to-be discovered and yearning-to-be-developed energies. Places inside of us, hidden or barely recognized, subterranean streams and wondrous terrains that reveal novelties and experiences waiting to be mined.

The gift of the night is that we get to go there, not just to uncover precious ore, but to bring it back up to the surface for the betterment of our lives, our relationships, and our souls.

What characters in your dreams are waiting to be awakened?

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Living ‘Til We Die

“I asked my doctor how long I have to live. She said, ‘Two months.’ Then, she paused, and said’ ‘Two to five, depending.'”

Jay and I had been friends for a long time. We usually meet for lunch once a month at our favorite restaurant, halfway between his home and mine, about a twenty-minute drive. I knew he had health issues, as most of us do when approaching our 70’s and 80’s. But Jay had mentioned, almost in passing at our previous lunch meeting, that he may be moving towards Hospice Care. I couldn’t believe it!

The man sitting across the table from me was fully alive. If you asked me to give you an example of someone who fit that description, “fully live,” Jay would easily come to mind. At 78, Jay had had at least four different careers during a long life that suddenly felt way too short. His current vocation was heading up a non-profit bestowing grants to organizations who confronted difficult population issues, usually in third world countries. For someone on their way to the end of life, Jay seemed as alive as ever.

There are people with whom our paths have crossed, that, looking back, seem more than coincidental. It’s as if someone other than me is writing this novel of life while placing certain characters in the plotline just at the moment I needed them. Jay is one of those.

I first met Jay when my first wife and I were heading towards divorce after 25 years of marriage. We sat down with Jay, a Family Mediator at the time, in a humble brick building on Park Road in Charlotte, while Jay laid out for us a plan to work out the terms of a separation agreement. Jay looked like a “dead head” wearing coat and tie — with his long, dark hair and beard. Affable, intelligent, and clearly a student of good communication and relational skills, my fears about the process settled down under the patient explanation of what my wife and I were about to face head-on. Three sessions, spaced several weeks apart, and we were done.

Fast forward at least 10 years, in my 50’s, recovering from a second divorce — the dreaded “rebound” marriage — I felt lonely and in need of male friendship. I needed men who weren’t married so we could talk about things only singles could understand. I had taken a class with Jay on “Faith Beyond Religion,” and was impressed again with his intelligence and his willingness to push the bounds of religious beliefs. So I found his phone number, and dialed.

“Hi Jay. I really enjoyed your class. Would you care to meet sometime?”

“Sure,” came the familiar resonant, deep voice. “I like walking while talking. Care to join me some evening after work on the greenway?”

“Sounds great to me.” I had an instant sense that a meaningful connection had been made.

It’s a mystery to me how these things happen. Carl Jung coined the term, “synchronicity.” We normally just call them “chance.” But I don’t buy it. What I believe now, after 10 years of a friendship that has had it’s highs and it’s lows, is that God was in my loneliness, and also in the friendship that unfolded on long walks and soulful talks over supper. It’s been one of those things that we refer to as, “It was meant to be.”

We live in a world that worships the material, the cause and the effect, explainable reasons and what can be measured or quantified. But for all that I have experienced with Jay over the years and what I have learned and what we have shared, I consider it to be true: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Jay is one of my Angels. And I trust that I’ve been something like that for him.

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Therapy as Poetry

Poetry can be a form of therapy. But have you ever thought about how psychotherapy itself is a lot like poetry? Yeah, me neither.

Until the other night in a dream, I was telling a group of other psychotherapists that “Therapy is like poetry?” I sounded as if I knew what I was talking about.

But truthfully, before my dream, I had never considered the analogy.

It’s not so unusual for dreams to reveal knowledge that seems like uncommon wisdom — similar to the kind of wisdom found in poetry. Once I had a dream in which I heard the distinct voice of a German woman, with a thick German accent, telling me, “Whatever you do that is not from a place of authenticity, will incur a debt!” She sounded like she meant business, so when I woke up, I wasted no time calling a woman whom I had been dating for a short time to say what I had been afraid to say before my dream: “I’m sorry, but it’s over.” It was the right decision, though awkward and sad.

Dreams and poetry can do this for us, can’t they? Images and metaphors clarify and penetrate us in a way like no other forms of communication. Images speak to us, disturb or enlighten us, and they can transform us. Through images, we are able to imagine what’s going on with our souls and what our souls actually desire — authenticity, for example, as in the dream of the German woman’s warning.

A long time ago, I was in a marriage that would eventually dissolve, and I had a dream in which a man who was suicidal split himself, right in front of me, into multiple clones of himself. If it had been a poem, it would clearly have been a poem of travesty and despair and deep internal conflict. But, at the time, I didn’t interpret the dream, nor did I present it to my therapist. Only two years after my wife left me, did I dare open my dream journal to review what had been going on inside of me prior to my marriage’s demise. When I finally looked into the frightening image, I saw the self in me I had been afraid to face at the time I had the dream. I saw that my sadness, fear, and anger had escaped my conscious awareness because I did not want to see it. I had been holding onto my marriage too tightly, ignoring problems that were festering underneath what seemed like an otherwise very good relationship.

“Therapy is like poetry,” then, in the sense that therapist and client listen to the spoken images and the unspoken ones. Often, for example, it is the image of the “inner child” who has been forgotten and ignored. He or she will show up in symptoms such as burn-out, or irrational anger or overwhelming anxiety because that part of the self has not been given a voice in the cadence of our lives. Just as poetry can stir up emotions and thoughts we didn’t know we had, so does good psychotherapy make space for spontaneous thoughts and emotions that lead to healing and hope. It’s as if we need to speak out loud in order to know ourselves in the presence of someone who cares to hear our deepest inner rhythms.

I recall these lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Man Watching”:

How small that is, with which we wrestle,
what wrestles with us, how immense;
were we to let ourselves, the way things do,
be conquered thus by the great storm,—
we would become far-reaching and nameless.

What we triumph over is the Small,
and the success itself makes us petty.
The Eternal and Unexampled
will not be bent by us.

Think of the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when his opponent’s sinews
in that contest stretch like steel,
he feels them under his fingers
as strings making deep melodies.

Whoever was overcome by this Angel
(who so often declined the fight),
he strides erect and justified
and great out of that hard hand
which, as if sculpting,
nestled around him.
Winning does not tempt him.
His growth is: to be deeply defeated
by ever greater things.

Rilke is referencing the story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel of God in the Old Testament; but even if you aren’t familiar with that story, you can probably feel it’s sense in the “sinews” of your body and soul — especially during those times when an illness or a relationship or a loss has wrestled with you all night, or for weeks, or years. Or you’ve wrestled against something, as in my marriage, that you wouldn’t or couldn’t face — until, if you were to move on with energy and desire and hope, you had to come to terms with your own dark Angels.

So if we listen deeply, as in therapy we try to do, we may hear the sounds, the images, the hidden rhythms of our lives seeking to sing songs of our souls. We may have to let go of something precious — like our egos, or a relationship that’s run it’s course, or a dead-end job — but what we find may be far greater than we could have ever imagined.

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Becoming Empowered

Recently, I re-read the spiritual classic, Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castenada, a book that was wildly popular in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I didn’t understand it at all in 1984 the first time someone recommended it to me. But having to recover from COVID the last few days, I had plenty of time, and I devoured every word.

Castenada was later suspected of being a fraud, having borrowed from others and fabricating much of what he experienced with Don Juan, his mentor-shaman. But what made his work so relevant was his attention to the human need for myths to live by — at a time, when all myths of the establishment were being called into question and dismantled.

While counseling a young man with whom I had worked for over three years, discussing his thoughts about the kind of man he wanted to be, Journey to Ixtlan spontaneously popped into my mind. It was if I had suddenly time-traveled back to a period in my young adult life when I, too, was struggling to decide what kind of man I wanted to be. I had a shaman of sorts — a Chaplain supervisor — who often helped to put me back together after long days of tending to the sick and the dying. Young men and women need such shamans or mentors to model what a meaningful life as a man or woman looks like. They demonstrate what personal empowerment is and what a difference inner power makes.

Falling apart and putting oneself back together is not an uncommon experience — if you live long enough. Like Castenada following Don Juan into the pitch-dark night, you have no choice but to trust your instincts in the face of the terrors that befall us: broken relationships, lost jobs, depression and anxiety-filled traumas of all sorts and kinds, and near brushes with death. We’re left feeling disoriented and off-balance — not readily aware that these “brick walls” sometimes turn into welcome “detours.” I consider myself fortunate to have had several mentors along the way who had already built up a store of power from their own life experiences. I became an apprentice to how they had learned to manage ordeals of suffering. They spared me the gory details of their own experiences, but in essence, they taught me how to transform my own encounters with sorrow and suffering into personal power.

We pay it forward anytime we lend our emotional support to a young adult who is looking up to us. Our own experiences of transformation help them, not by giving them our power but by showing them how to develop their own internal resources.

A client may say to me in the middle of a counseling session, “I wish this wasn’t so hard!” I feel that, too. But then, reflexively, I think, “If it hadn’t been for the hard things I’ve dealt with, I might not be here, right now, today.” I may recall and even share a funny but poignant scene in the movie, A League of Their Own, when the coach, played by Tom Hanks, yells at his right fielder for dropping a fly ball. Right there on the baseball field, in front of all to see and hear, she melts in tears, crying out at her coach, “It’s too hard!” To which Tom Hanks replies, “Hard? Hard? It’s the ‘hard’ that makes baseball great!”

The most important, if not all, lessons that I’ve learned in life have come by using the storm force winds of life to steer me along the edges of apparent or real defeat towards some new perspective or some new awareness that I may have, otherwise, missed completely. The guiding stars of my life have only been noticed by embracing the darkest of times.

So when my clients sometimes comment that they wish they didn’t have it so hard, I’ve been known to quip, “Is it really harder to face this and challenge yourself than it is to continue doing what you’re doing? It may take as much energy to change as it does to maintain the status quo – but the payoff is a heck of a lot better.” It would not surprise me at all if, in response, I was told “Go to Hell!” But so far, that has never happened.

Our best friends, by far, are those who can tell us the truth in the face of our ordeals, while being kind about it, too. Personal power comes from these moments of truth that are like seeds that take time to germinate and grow. Later, we may laugh together when they tell us, “I’ll never forget the time when you told me…, fill in the blank.” What was hard to hear at the time became a lesson never forgotten, because it was exactly what we needed in order to move forward, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Light found in the midst of darkness becomes truth that empowers us to live fearlessly and with joy.

You can make an entire life worth living by mining the treasures buried in sorrows, frustration, and defeat. It probably won’t be easy, but each time we face our ordeals with the right kind of support and with courage, we experience a new burst of power, while becoming stronger, wiser, and more deeply in love with the mystery we call life.

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Guardian Angels

Do you have a guardian angel? I do. And I don’t even believe in them.

I know there are many people who place their faith in angels, but I am not one of them. Once, I was leading a small group adult Bible study, and the lesson was on angels. When I asked the class how many people in the class believed in angels, I was stunned when more than half of the participants raised their hands. They should have been teaching me.

The fact is, though,I do have a guardian angel, albeit a Flat Tire one.

In the past 25 years, whenever I have had a flat tire, within 5 minutes, some total stranger shows up to help me out. One time, I was in a rush to pedal home after a 30 mile bicycle ride, and it started to rain as I was just a mile or so from reaching home. “Whoosh” went the front tire. I was stranded, and I was frustrated to the point of nearly losing my religion. But within a few minutes, a fellow cyclist stopped and literally changed the tire for me. I made it home in time for the meeting I had been afraid I’d miss.

That’s just one experience. I could tell you many more.

Except this last time. My guardian angel was nowhere to be found. My friend and I were returning from an evening Charlotte Knights baseball game and while driving through a pretty sketchy part of Charlotte on the way home, I felt one of the wheels grinding on the roadway. So, I pulled into the nearest gas station — fortunately only a few hundred yards away from where I’d had the flat.

It happened to be one of those evenings during the gas crisis when people were running out of fuel while waiting in line at the pump. All of AAA’s roadside service vehicles were delivering gas to stranded motorists. No one was available for flat tires. But Geico, my insurance carrier, said they could send someone — it would just be an hour before they could get to me. Great! It was already past 10 p.m. No angel to be found.

Within 20 minutes, however, a truck’s lights emerged from the dark night and pulled in beside of me. The very kind driver quickly assessed the situation and changed the tire as easy as that. “Where,” I wondered though, “was my Flat Tire Angel?” I felt let down, like maybe I had been punished for some sin for which I had not paid my dues. My track record of being helped within 5 minutes had been shattered.

Then, as I was about to get back in my car to continue our journey home, I looked at the side door of the truck that had come to my rescue. The sign read, “Guardian Angel Towing Service.” I swear on the Bible this is true!

When I do a google search, the closest towing service called “Guardian Angel” is in Baltimore, Maryland. There is NO “Guardian Angel Towing Service” in Charlotte, North Carolina nor anywhere else nearby.

I have a witness! I didn’t just imagine any of this.

If you have a guardian angel, would you share your story with me, and tell me what it means. Because the best I can figure is that “someone” is definitely looking out for me, and maybe the Flat Tire Angel is just God enjoying the experience of letting me know that I’m being looked out for in lots of other ways that I fail to notice.

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Whether I believe in angels or not.

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Endings

“My life is over. I’ll never feel the way I felt when I was with…” Fill in the blank. A relationship with a man or a woman who fulfilled you for a time — briefly or extended, has come to it’s end. To heal a marriage from the destruction of secrets and betrayal, doors must be closed — for good.

These endings happen, more often, it seems than is publicly acknowledged.

I once attended a play at a community theatre in a small town that is the county seat of one of the most conservative sections of North Carolina. The title of the play has vacated my memory, but I well recall the two people who occupied the stage — a man sitting at a small desk on one side and a woman at her own desk on the other. They had met for one glorious date when they were young adults. But they never met again, for whatever reason — life. And yet, they maintained a correspondence through love letters for the rest of their lives into old age. That one date was the experience of their young lifetimes, an experience never forgotten, unrepeatable, and transformative. Despite marriages to others, they kept their secrets of fulfillment to themselves. The audience stood in rapturous applause at the curtain call, and I wondered: “What deep, enduring chord did this love story touch in such a conservative audience?”

Of course, the answer is obvious. Unrequited love is more the norm than the exception. The one who got away, the woman or man about whom we wonder, “What if?”

A photo of the one who escaped from me sat in the bottom of a metal file box I used to keep, along with other mementos, ribbons, and rewards from my past. Her 7th grade school picture displaying her pretty face and blonde hair and blue eyes, and a smile that filled a universe. Her image, slightly tattered through the years, traveled with me from place to place each time I moved, well into my 40’s. Then one day, I decided that I was being silly and immature — it was time to say goodbye. So, into the trash can she went.

But she never left me.

A phone call from time to time, whenever I visited the city where she lived, would reawaken the longing and the wondering. Once, we even met for a glorious afternoon walk at a nearby park, deciding afterwards that it might be best to forego such meetings that could result in the disruption of our lives and relationships. But still, once or twice a year, she visits me in my dreams, and I can’t wait to talk to my therapist. “WTF? Why can’t I get her out of my head?”

It’s not me, I’ve learned, that won’t forget. It’s my heart. It’s my soul.

At the end of the movie, “Shakespeare in Love,” there is scene where a broken-hearted Shakespeare says to his beloved Rosalind that his life is now over. Sadly, Rosalind is betrothed to royalty and will leave England the next morning for a new life in colonial America. That Shakespeare is bereft is an understatement — their mutual loss is deep and palpable. Yet Rosalind is prophetic. She tells Shakespeare that his life is far from over, delivering to him the plot for his next play and the next chapter of his incredibly creative and artistically prolific life — a legacy and labor of love for the world and for the ages. A woman who he would have preferred to marry, became his Muse.

When my lost love visits me in my dreams, I feel alive and excited. My heart is full to overflowing and I don’t want the dream to end. But like Rosalind, my lost love sends me back to the daytime universe to search for that aliveness and exuberance in my relationships, my work, my creative outlets, and in the world. Sometimes, successfully….Sometimes, not so much. Not necessarily a destination, but a journey worth pursuing.

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Prescription for Despondency

The dictionary definition of “despondent” is this: feeling or showing extreme discouragement, dejection, or depression. Synonyms for despondent might be these: disheartened, forlorn, or hopeless.

We’ve all been there, from time to time. To start with, there’s COVID, then Vladamir Putin and the Ukraine, the stock market doldrums, children and teachers murdered in Buffalo and in Uvalde, conspiracy theories, and Roe vs Wade. I’ve noticed lately that I’ve felt despondent way more often. And I don’t like it one bit.

On top of it all, I’m 69 and my body is not what it used to be. I’ve become part of the club of arthritis sufferers who I’ve heard talk about how they have their good days and their bad days — inflammation and stiffness of joints that fluctuates with no rhyme or reason, or with the weather. Whatever! I do strength training, stretching, watch what I eat, and get plenty of sleep. But I’ve noticed that, when I’m near a crowd of people, the ones my eyes follow the most are the ones in wheelchairs. I wonder, “Will that be me someday?” I hope not, and I’m banking on knee replacement surgery to stem this tide of aging body parts. But who knows. So, I refuse to give up my bourbon. If one must go through this stuff, there still needs to be joy.

When you do a Google search on “despondency,” you get quotes like this one: “The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.” I don’t find this helpful. I’m already at odds with myself for being despondent. What am I supposed to do?

I’m nine years older than my wife, a very attractive, youthful, active, and fit person. As I have slowed down in my level of activity, I’ve noticed fragments of shame and guilt creeping into our relationship. I feel like I’m fighting off the gravitational pull towards becoming a grumpy, old man. When she invites me to go for a walk, instead of answering with an enthusiastic “Sure,” like I used to do, I experience a surge of anger at myself because I’d rather read a book or watch NBA basketball than drag my stiff joints through the neighborhood for a mile or so.

The other day I decided it was past time for me to lean into my shame. “Honey, I’ve got something to say,”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to know that just because I can’t keep up with you like I used to, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you like I used to. I’ve been feeling despondent about how I’m slowing down — not to mention all that’s going on in the world.”

“That’s ok. You don’t have to worry about that. I love you as much as ever.”

And then the best part of all. She came over, put her arms around me, and hugged me for longer than we usually hug. It was what I needed.

Interestingly, the next two days, the despondency disappeared. I’m sure it will come back, from time to time. But I had found something better than any drug or even knee replacement: self-acceptance, vulnerability, understanding, and compassion.

If you’ve been experiencing despondency, I recommend what I discovered in the refuge of my marriage. Maybe you will find it there, or with friends, a therapist, or your church. I hope so. But definitely skip the quotes on despondency. You can have your down times, and still cherish the beauty, joy, and wonders of being alive.

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Modern Day Icarus: Flying Too High

Wishing one could fly must be a fantasy for every child — I don’t know. Maybe only for boys. My fantasy was to be like Superman. My mother safety-pinned a towel around my neck, and off I would fly around the house, faster than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings with ease. Of course, by suppertime, I had to wash my hands, sit down at the family table, and return to my Clark Kent life.

The Greeks told stories about this kind of fantasy, only the stories were meant for adults. The myth of Icarus was about a young man who was given wings made of wax and feathers. Icarus was warned that he could fly at will and as far and as high as he wished, but to be careful not to go too close to the sun, else his wings would melt. This is akin to placing a child in the middle of a chocolate factory and telling the child not to eat too much. Good luck!

We have modern day stories of Icarus: men and women who fly too close to the sun, crashing and burning for all to see. They’re like modern day morality plays, reminders of what happens when we get carried away with ambition, or swallowed up by sexual desire, or lost in our greed or our grasping for power, success…, you name it. We’ve seen it all. And sometimes, we’ve even been there ourselves. We know what it’s like to have to rebuild our lives from the carnage and wreckage we’ve incurred. Friends of mine in recovery programs tell me that the day they hit bottom was the worst day of their lives,…and the best. The beginning of sobriety and the birth of hope.

The most common form of the myth of Icarus I see in my private practice are those corporate employees who have been given the golden handcuffs: outsized salaries with bonuses and perks, paired with otherworldly expectations that amount to three words….Produce. Produce. Produce!

When human beings imagine themselves to be human doings, Icarus is being constellated in those persons’ souls. A slim portion of employees on the bell-curve of success — the ultra Type A’s of the world — can actually do this, apparently, without much damage. The rest of us on the upslope and downslope of the curve have to really struggle to keep up the pace, and the price is usually high: broken relationships, families that are starved for the heartfelt presence of an absent parent, all forms of addiction and depression and anxiety-disorders, and any number of demons related to threats to one’s physical and spiritual health. Our inner lives, home to the values inherent in being a human being, becomes relatively forgotten or rationalized in comparison with our outer concerns and values related to treating ourselves as if we are robots or machines.

Carl Jung, the famous psychologist who wrote MAN’S SEARCH FOR A SOUL, wrote that “…when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” We see this most glaringly, not just in individual lives, but in the larger culture as well. When there are more guns in America than people, for instance, Icarus has flown too high, with disasters happening with tragic regularity. When corporate and individual profit is more precious than care for the earth, Icarus is close to a having a meltdown. We, as a nation, seal our fate, when we ignore the values of protecting our children above all, and when we create economic and environmental debts that generations to come will most certainly have to pay, and painfully so.

It’s not all so dire as it might seem, though. The Greeks told stories like the myth of Icarus for a reason: to remind us of who we are and what we are capable of creating, with enough awareness and courage. It takes heroic courage to make one’s family a priority over productivity and profit. It takes heroic courage, to strive for balance in one’s life, vocationally and spiritually. It take heroic, Icarus-like courage, to use God’s gifts for improving the world, rather than just dominating it or selling our souls for the sake of political and economic power. Falling to earth doesn’t have to be the last word. It can be the beginning of reclaiming our souls and the soulfulness of the world.