There is an allure to living in other worlds, isn’t there?
To flip through a magazine and pick apart a celebrity’s relationship on the cover of US Weekly. Or pointing out what family members could be doing to better themselves – and are not because they are simply lazy or unambitious. Renowned clinical psychologist, Jordan Peterson asks, what is it that makes it easier to help others than ourselves when we are our most important element? Why do we pour more energy, time and thought into other people’s lives and problems than we do into our own?
Where does the need to magnify a friend’s life override the ability to investigate our own shortcomings? Why is it so much easier to brush your dog’s teeth every night and not your own?
Peterson introduces the concept of humanity’s play with chaos and order. Order being the masculine – symbolizing the “known” or primary hierarchical structure.
Some examples of order include:
1. roll-call at the beginning of class. 2. cookbooks. instructions to a recipe with detailed description of each step. 1/4 cup of salt. 2/4 teaspoon of crushed sage. 3. peacetime army of soldiers, police officers, therapists 4. a lubricated condom.
Chaos is symbolically the feminine and associated with the unknown. “This is partly because all the things we have come to know were born, originally of the unknown (pg 41).
Some examples of chaos include:
1. sexual desire 2. long aimless walks in the neighborhood 3. cooking with all the ingredients you have! Improv in the kitchen. 4. Driving with the uncertainty of a car radius leaving an accident open to chance.
The dichotomy exists regardless of the barriers we create to preserve order. Even in the Garden of Eden, where paradise is eternal – the serpent still finds his way to Adam and Eve. Perhaps, the truth being that without the serpent, the pair would have never taken a bite of the forbidden fruit in the first place. Without the serpent, human beings would be just as other creatures – with a different consciousness.
“If it were possible to banish everything threatening – everything dangerous – that would mean that another danger would emerge: that of permanent human infantilism and absolute uselessness” (47).
Therefore, we conclude that in order to walk in the sun, we must brave the storm, confront the dragon lying in the abyss to procure a future worthy of human condition. Worthy of our suffering. To have one foot over the ledge of chaos while having one-foot set firmly in the grounding of the known. This way, we are able to tread through life growing in our competence and agency. We become agents of God, walking with the essence of good, evil, and chaos within. Embraced and holy. Walking in the light, and standing tall while facing the shadows within.
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