A curious thing happens to you when you've thought about the human shadow long enough: you get to where you just can't stand to think about it anymore. Where everything looks and sounds like shadow. Where you just want to retreat from the world, pull the woods and the grandkids over your head, and hide.
Which doesn't work, of course. My own shadow follows me into every hiding place. I tuck myself in comfortably and then hear myself griping and carping about someone who's merely acting in a way I've acted myself on many an occasion.
That's what's so depressing about it, I suppose. There is nowhere to hide.
I live in a bubble of plenty: of beautiful scenery with private spaces full of talented, well-educated and well-connected neighbors. And even here we squabble. Feuds regularly erupt over something minor which can last for years. Our famous women's group, which has gotten together every full moon for going on 18 years now, just got into a big tizzy over the suggestion that, since it's a neighborhood group, our meetings should be held in the neighborhood. ???
Say something — anything, even something as obvious as that — in a group of people — any group of people, even the most kind and well meaning — then sit back and watch the projections fly. Some of the most famously, fiercely contentious organizations in the world exist to study the works of Carl Jung, who first coined the term "human shadow." Really. True dat.
Why are human beings — even those blessed with peace and plenty — so easy to upset? Don't we have anything better to do than pounce all over one another at the slightest provocation?
Nope. Not so far. We're generally not any better at getting along with each another than hummingbirds. The more feeders you put out, the more hummingbirds will come to swarm around and fight over the feeders.
Which I find so alarming — in humans, not in hummingbirds — that I start trying to write about the human shadow again.
Argh.
"We might just be in time to stop the apocalypse. But it will be touch and go." –Konrad Lorenz
