Quietly do the next and most necessary thing
I take a walk in the icy, dark morning and overthink my next steps.
January is a mirror month, 31 days of tilting toward the past in reflection and bouncing the light back to plot the trajectory of the year ahead.
I don’t usually bring my phone on my morning walks. The hours before sunrise hold a sacred hush that I don’t like disturbing with canned noise. But today, I can’t stop listening to Carl Jung’s dogs.
“I am still a victim of my thinking. When will I be the master of my thinking? When can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that my thoughts, those unruly hounds will crawl to my feet? How can I ever hope to hear your voice louder, to see your face clearer, when all my thoughts howl?”
This desperate treatise to his soul was written by the world-renowned Swiss psychiatrist in the infamous Red Book, a personal exploration of Jung’s deepest and darkest self during a mental-breaking period from December 1913 to January 1914. For the next 16 years, Jung analyzed his experiences in this book. Although it was widely known to exist upon his death in the 1960s, its contents were locked away in a family vault for many years, until it was finally published in 2009.
The book's origin was precipitated by an unrepairable falling out with his mentor, Sigmund Freud (yup father Freud himself). Jung had begun to disagree with Freud on particular topics, the obvious ones—sexual fixations, oedipal obsession, all the Freudian-neuroses stuff we know and yeesh about today. Jung believed that Freud had only scratched the surface of the human unconscious, and perhaps most importantly, allowed his cynicism and intolerance for the human inclination toward spirituality, symbolism, and myth to prohibit a more encouraging view of human nature.
To wrap it up quickly: Our boy Carl agonized about whether or not to write about his opposing views for two months. He was sick over it, sure that if he followed his heart, it would lead to the loss of a friend and mentor. And he was right. Jung published his thoughts and Freud flipped. Iced him the eff out. So did a lot of Jung’s other so-called “friends.” He was a pariah. If there was an island for misfit psychiatrists, Jung would’ve been banished there.
So what’s an ostracized co-father of analytical psychology to do? Battle his own demons, obviously! Remember that line from the movie The Wedding Planner? Jennifer Lopez’s forever-single character quips, “Y'know, “those who can't do, teach"? Well, those who can't wed, plan.” Albeit a corny trope to employ concerning a genius like Jung (Jung-ifer Lopez! Sorry Carl…), but in a role reversal fit for a blockbuster dramedy, Jung began writing The Red Book as an experiment to basically shrink himself (read: not Honey I Shrunk the Kids shrink, Good Will Hunting shrink).
(500 words in and you’re wondering why I’m so fixated on Jung. (blame my mother! jk))
Despite his inner turmoil, Jung was a pragmatic visionary. He coined the concepts of collective consciousness, intro and extroversion, and laid the foundation for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test. I had a professor in college who would constantly reference Jung’s prescription against living a “provisional life” as a way to prepare his students for the “real world.” If you’re unfamiliar, “provisional” (aka puer or puella state) is used to describe an attitude toward life that’s more or less imaginary, not rooted in the here and now. When you’re a 19-year-old Pisces who had already switched majors thrice and colleges twice (in total I attended four different schools), to hear that the cure for this madness was to simply, “Just pick a line of work and stick with it,” left me feeling broken and misunderstood. To drift is in the very nature of my own stardust. I couldn’t write the guy off fast enough.
But like Freud, I was wrong. Had I dug deeper, I would have discovered there are two sides to this archetype and that Jung too tended to drift into the gray. In a letter to Freud in 1911 Jung wrote, “My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology.” (Letters II, 366)
Before you write me off as an astrological whimsifier, please understand: I have never blamed Mercury’s reversal for a hectic season of my life and I don’t follow the moon except to track its phenology. Regarding the metaphysical, I am as pragmatic as they come—with one caveat, my birth sign. Even though I was brought up in a religious household, like many of us I’ve always loosely observed my zodiac sign. At twelve, flipping through subscriptions of Jane and Sassy magazine for my horoscope. At twenty-two, after the end of an eight-year relationship with another Pisces, I nodded along as a friend remarked that it was destined to be ill-fated— two fish tethered together for too long.
As much as I saw glimmers of myself mirrored in the astrological, the fragments were always edged with shame. It felt sophomoric to put stock in conjecture shoved between tampon ads and “6 Ways to Know if He Likes You!”
When I had my birth chart read at the age of 35, I cried. It was like all those shards I’d been carrying around in my pockets found their way out and I could finally see myself fully. The fish on the line stopped thrashing about, but I still felt self-conscious about the method that had landed me.
Then Carl walked in.
“In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis, I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle. I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand.” (Letters I, 475).
Jung used astrology to gain insight, and theorized that a natal chart can act like a diagram of a soul’s living embodiment. “It can “give… a more or less total picture of the individual’s character.” (Collected Works) He wrote extensively on the subject, even touching on the major cosmic transformation of the age of Pisces shifting to the age of Aquarius, and how that might affect the collective psyche.
Jung’s willingness to dive into the antiquity of astrology, rather than write it off as hogwash has me enamored. I’ve been making my way through the cryptic pages of The Red Book, learning more about his prolific thoughts on astrology and reading over the copious correspondence between Jung and his contemporaries, friends, and strangers.
One such letter was a response to a woman searching for guidance to a question we all seek: how to live. Writing in 1933 (post-The Red Book), Jung replies:
“Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing. So long as you think you don’t yet know what this is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.
So I’ll keep walking, drifting. Watching the pavement stretch before me like I’m striding confidently atop Earth’s roof. From here I can see it all, everything is clear. As my natal chart says, that is very much like a Pisces Sun, Pisces Moon, Aquarius Rising. I take comfort in that and float on down the road. After all, the last word Jung wrote in the Red Book was “moglichkeit”...possibility.
Loose Bits:
Clearly this Jung shit has me so fascinated, but the gag is the mental gymnastics my mind has to perform in order to not type “Yung” every single dang time.
It’s been a minute since I’ve gotten zealously entrenched in a “new-to-me” idea and I’m always surprised at the way my brain translates this deep dive into, “new tattoo!” Ask me why I have “Who is John Galt?” on my hip bone…
This had nothing to do with hiking, nature, or the outdoors. Part of me wants to apologize, but mostly I just want to acknowledge that I know.
Do you have a chicken wishbone on your kitchen windowsill drying out so your kids can pull it apart? Maybe you do. I think you either come from a wishbone family or you don’t.
Books I'm reading:
The Outermost House by Henry Beston, memoir (I have to thank Eric the book wizard at Shaker Mill Books for putting me on to this.)
The Red Book by Carl Gustav Jung, nonfiction
Landmarks, Robert MacFarlane, nonfiction
Place we've been exploring: Our living room mostly. And sometimes outside.
Things that have given me pause:
Obviously “The Red Book”
Also, writer and environmentalist William Cronan’s essay on “The Trouble With Wilderness” (This is a piece of nature writing I return to over and over again. It’s a timeless and thought-provoking read that never fails to jolt me back into critical reflection of land use and my (our) place within it.)
Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast episodes with Dr. Jack Kruse & Andrew Huberman. More on this later.
February’s Playlist:
Current Obsessions:
Soup, specifically this one.
Jason Isbell’s album Southeastern (I know I’m late George!)
Phototherapy
Trader Joe’s Ginger Drink Mix
Sophie Lucido Johnson’s Substack
Stay in motion,
Tay
UPCOMING HIKES
Early Bird Spotting for Families
Sunday, February 11th 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Join Berkshire Natural Resources Council and Berkshire Family Hikes in searching for returning birds and other signs of the coming spring! Some binoculars will be provided and if there is enough snow, we’ll also have snowshoes available for adults and kids. Participants will receive a take-home kit to attract feathered friends in their own backyards!
Difficulty: Easy
What to Bring: Please bring water, wear sturdy footwear, and wear layers. If you have binoculars, bring them too! There will be a few pairs to loan.
Location: Thomas & Palmer Brook
Google Maps | GPS: 42.1955, -73.3370 (frontage on Route 23)
Hike Leader: Taylor
Language: This hike will be led in English.
Questions: For questions reach out to Taylor at berkshirefamilyhikes@gmail.com
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This one is a goodie- who doesn’t love a JLo reference!