Through a Jungian Lens

Now this is a “busy” photo!  This is a scene from the back corner of my yard where there is an old concrete pad that would have originally been used for a shed of sorts but now sits in the corner with nothing better to do than hold an assortment of containers that hold flowers and other items of general nonsense.  I took this photo in hopes to capture a photo of the Oriole as it stopped for a drink of water.  As you can see, I was somewhat successful.

Now, about the frogs, obviously a father and his son; frogs are significant in my family, especially for my son and I.  As a French-Canadian, I was/am often called a frog, sometimes in jest and sometimes as a put-down.  My son had to learn to live with this when he was younger, a time when the word was mostly used in a negative context.  And in learning to deal with this problem, it became a focus of pride.  Now, frogs are everywhere in our life.

Again, it is about being different, even if the differences are only perceived rather than real.  Human history is filled with how we deal with those who are different, they are the scapegoats for the community shadow, the collective unconscious.  The most blatant example is the Holocaust where Jewish people became the scapegoat for a modern world.  Yes, I extend the collective unconscious beyond just the German community as the inaction, deflections and quiet support given to the scapegoat complex was much broader than Hitler’s band of muscle men.  Today, the western world has a new scapegoat – the Muslim world.  We call it profiling for the protection of our society against terrorism.

Scapegoats – we begin early.  As a school principal, this was likely the main issue that brought children and teachers to my office.  The targetting of the weak, those not quite like “us.”  Today we call it like it is, bullying.  At least within schools where it is safe to point out and punish the bullies.  But in the larger world?  Who are the bullies and who are the scapegoats?  Why?  Tough questions with no answers likely to be given.

Yesterday, I was out for an evening walk when I came upon these two mule deer about a kilometre from town.  Thankfully I was carrying the camera as I got a number of different photos of these two.  It had been a busy day with editing work on my latest book and doing some yard and garden work occupying most of the day.

During the walk, a very quiet time for both my wife and I, my mind soon was filled with other book projects, specifically books about my life in China.  I probably have ten thousand photos archived from two years spent in that country.  I guess that means that I will continue the work of sorting through photos and having them tell stories about life.

Now that I have finished two books for the SoFoBoMo challenge, I find that I am tired, both in body and in mind.  But, it is a good kind of tired.  Not that it is really comparative, but I think back to when my children were born.  After each was born, my wife was tired and rightly so.  But even though the work of giving birth was a herculean effort, the kind of peace at the end erased the pain of giving birth.  That is the kind of peaceful state of tiredness that I am feeling after having given birth to these books.  In a way, the creation of the books was yet another journey to be inscribed in the book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces.