Growth Through Fire: Carl Jung on Solving Life's Greatest Problems
Carl Jung said that life’s greatest and most important problems are unsolvable.
“They can never be solved, but only outgrown…”
However, in Western society, which has been dominated by rationality and reason as the highest values for multiple centuries, we approach life problems in a completely opposite manner.
We are the great problem-solvers. We are the fixers of everything that we perceive as wrong with this life.
But if we cannot solve a great life problem, as it’s often the case, we are overwhelmed with feelings of shame, embarrassment, and inadequacy.
I recently talked with members of the Sisyphus Society about a closely related issue.
I see a lot of people, both offline and online, not taking any constructive action in their lives because they are feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated.
They say they will start moving toward their goals once things in their lives are more stable, once their problems are solved, once they feel better.
What these people are trying to do is solve their problems rather than outgrow them.
Consider this: If you do what most people do with their problems, struggles, and suffering—hide from them, try to mask them, distract yourself from them—you are by definition unable to grow. All the tactics you are using rely on you not moving forward. They work by temporarily relieving you of discomfort precisely because you are staying in your comfort zone.
Forget the idea that you need to become a different person and that your life needs to be different than it is right now before you can continue, or start, living.
That was my message to members of the Sisyphus Society. And that is my message to you.
If our greatest problems can only be outgrown, then the surest way to never outgrow them is to get trapped in tactics that keep your life stagnant.
What temporarily relives you but, in the long term, limits your function isn’t a viable lifestyle option. It’s exactly “as advertised,” temporary relief.
As Jung said, those life problems aren’t solved, but they fade out “when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.”
And this new and stronger life tendency will only arise as a result of your full engagement in life.
There is no time to wait. Throw yourself into the great fire of life because that is where you are challenged to grow beyond the human that you are now.
“There is the source of fire, there is the fullness of energy. A man who is not on fire is nothing: he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional. He must be on fire even if he does make a fool of himself. A flame must burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines; there is no warmth, nothing.” - Carl Jung
Thank you for reading.
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