Through a Jungian Lens

I am writing today’s post from the airport in Toronto as I wait for the boarding call to ShangHai.  I have been fortunate over the past two weeks to be with my grandson and his family.  It didn’t take many days before I was the adult to go to for the little guy, especially as I got to care for him when he was ill and not able to go to playschool.  The photo taken above is from yesterday morning.  There is little question that the bonding went two ways and for that I am immensely thankful and blessed.

Relationship is vital and unavoidable.  I often talk here of individuation and I wonder if some of my readers mistake individuation as being something that exists separate from relationship.  Individuation is about getting to know oneself through interactions with others in the outer world, with objects in the outer world as well as the culture and place on the planet in which we find ourselves.  Relationship must also consider an inner world filled with its own cast of characters and complexes and landscapes.  What we discover about ourselves is only possible through our responses and our awareness of our responses to both inner and outer worlds.

One does not live in a bubble that excludes the inner and outer worlds.  In absence of inner and outer world there is no sense of self, no sense of separateness, no sense of otherness.  Two weeks watching my grandson expand his awareness of both himself and his grandfather has taught both of us, blessed both of us.  And, as a result I leave his home a better man.