Carl Jung and the Shadow (Jack E. Othon)
(...) Have you ever said or done something really shitty, mostly on an impulse, that you later regretted? After the damage was done and the other person involved was hurt, you couldn’t bury your shame fast enough. “Why did I say that?” you might have asked yourself in frustration. It’s that “Why?” question that indicates the presence of a blind
The only times when the pain simply, miraculously ceases, are those moments just after she laughs.
Something Ji-woo says or does makes her laugh, and then immediately afterward she is left blank,
empty even of pain. At such times, the sheer fact of her having laughed seems unbelievable, and makes her laugh again. Admittedly, this laughter always seems more manic than happy, but Ji-woo
loves to see it all the same.
“Was this it, Mum? Was this what made you laugh?”
Then Ji-woo will repeat whatever it is he’d just been doing, such as pursing his lips and using his hands to mimic a horn growing out of his forehead, or else making a clattering sound, sticking his
head between his legs and calling out “Mum, Mum!” in a silly voice. The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret
mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal.
There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually
run out.
Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves—living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them
cheerlessly recall all the sadness they’d briefly managed to forget.
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“ I need to know that everything will be OK,” she continued quietly.” That I will be able to live with myself.”
A sharp tug in my chest. How often had I whispered those same words to the ceiling in the rectory, lying awake in bed, consumed with thoughts of what my life could have been? I need to know that everything will be OK.
Didn’t we all wasn’t that unspoken cry of our broken souls?
“ I don’t know if everything will be OK. It may not be. You may think you are at the lowest point now and then look up one day and see that it’s gotten so much worse.” I looked down at my hands, the hands that had pulled my oldest sister from a rope after she hung herself in my parents garage.” You may not ever be able to get out of bed in the morning with the security. That moment of OK may never come.All you can do is try to find a new balance, a new starting point. Find whatever love is left in your life and hold on to it tightly. And one day,things will have gotten less grey, less dull. One day, you might find that you have a life again. A life that makes you happy.”
- Priest
what makes you happy just do it, not any other thing just that thing(s) and do it like you mean it and overcome it.
