During mid-life I find myself prone to bouts of anxiety, particularly when facing stretches of time alone. Lacking career or educational goals and having little interest in a social life makes it difficult to address the dissatisfaction and loneliness I feel.
I see myself only in relation to others: parent, family member, employee, helpful neighbor or friend. Aspirational and creative work is for other people, not me. Most importantly, I do not understand that personal change starts close-in.
I have a dream
Despairing my situation will ever change, I have the following dream:
A beautiful and spirited horse, head held high, is led into a small, gloomy apartment. The entrance to a narrow tunnel opens from one wall. To leave the confinement of the apartment and pass through the tunnel to its unknown destination, the horse must undergo a dramatic lowering of its head.
I understand the dream to say the way out of my personal confinement starts with radical humbling. Hardly the solution I want, Life steps in with the perfect means for proceeding: a new job.
Initially attracted to the job’s promise of interesting work, I find a far different reality. Not only does it fail to provide for my talents, its most outstanding feature is tedious, repetitive, and often frustrating, clerical work.
I push to find employment more to my liking, but half-dozen inter-company interviews and several job searches fail to produce change. When a promising opportunity for promotion leads nowhere, confusion and discouragement hit hard.
Anchored by financial necessity, yet armed with the personal meaning of my dream, I am ready to seek mastery of a different kind. I commit to the job I have and recast it as a spiritual practice.
Following my dream
First order of business: unwavering courtesy and patience to all people in all circumstances. Next, learn to perform tedious, mundane tasks for longer and longer stretches of time.
As my will strengthens, I ask the perennial question of spiritual seekers everywhere: who am I? When bored or frustrated, who am I? Absent recognition and status, who am I? Who am I when disappointment visits yet again?
Initially, ‘who I am’ ain’t pretty. Unconscious of feeling entitled, dull work generates anger and resentment. Unaware of wanting control, authority provokes antagonism. Heavy with conflict, I feel leaden and disengaged.
Familiarity with Jung’s teachings on archetypes and complexes helps me bring more consciousness to the moods and affects that seize me. I learn to recognize predictable streams of thought and question the motive or agenda the thoughts carry. Combating their disruptive intent allows me more freedom of choice.
During difficult episodes I find encouragement by imagining myself in the heat of a fiery kiln out of which something desirable will come.
To my great satisfaction, something desirable does come. Slowly, I acquire mastery of an inner kind, dropping harmful habits I didn’t realize I had and developing invisible muscle I didn’t realize I needed. My unmet desire for a prescribed, societal role is replaced with a uniquely rewarding and creative life; anxiety transforms to joy, uncertainty to courage.
Victory comes as I realize personal change is not outside-in, but inside-out.