I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how the Shadow operates in adults. But as a mother, grandmother, and frequent caretaker of other people’s children, I’ve actually dealt with how the Shadow operates in children more often than I have in adults.

 

Poor dears. They hate to be wrong. Hate to be caught in the wrong, that is. The most loving child will lie shamelessly to cover up a petty error that no one cares about anyway. Cannot stand to lose at games. Thinks nothing of cheating. And it takes a power of parenting to even make a dent in this apparently innate human outlook.

 

Then there are those of us who grow up in fundamental religious families, as I did. Where everything is black and white. Where your parents know all, their world view is iron clad and unassailable — divine no less — and no matter how ridiculous they act or how absurd they sound, you must honor and obey them on pain of corporal punishment and fear of eternal damnation. Where a child cannot afford to be caught making a mistake… Fertile breeding ground for the human shadow, indeed. If I’m not a good girl even God won’t love me. It takes children raised like I was a long time to be able to admit their own mistakes or to see a bit of their own Shadow. I will always struggle with an unconscious desire to be right, to know it all.

 

Here’s what I wish someone had said to me when I was a kid:

The best and brightest of us still make at least 3 or 4 mistakes every day. The very worst of us operate from a continual state of error. But most of us lie somewhere in between. We do a lot of things we can be proud of, we do a lot of things we can’t be proud of — that’s just the way it is.

Trying to pretend you haven’t made a mistake when you have made a mistake, trying to cover it up, merely adds another mistake to your running total. It adds telling a lie to what would have otherwise been just another routine slip-up.

Besides, we actually have to make mistakes. Human beings learn by trial and error.

So, give it up. You don’t know it all. You’re not always going to win. You’re not perfect.

Let go of being “right.”

You’ll be happier. You’ll develop a sense of humor about yourself. You’ll become less judgmental about others.

And you’ll be a lot more fun to be around.