“Who can doubt that life is the gift of the gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy?” Seneca asked. Living should be something as natural as breathing and, however, many times life seems difficult for us, as if it were a riddle to be solved, instead of a reality to be experienced.
When we lose the cardinal directions, it is natural that we look for something to hold on to. Many times we try to find those handles in spirituality or Personal Growth gurus, coaches and, of course, psychologists. When he was already an established psychoanalyst, one of his patients asked Jung how she should live. His response was as unusual as it was wise and illuminating.
You live as you can
On December 15, 1933, Jung wrote a short letter explaining to a woman how she should live.
“Your questions have no answers because you want to know how to live. You live as you can. There is no single, defined, prescribed or appropriate method. If that’s what you want, you’d better join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what to do. Furthermore, that way fits with the average way of humanity in general.
“But if you want to follow your individual path, it will be the path that you yourself create, that is never prescribed, you do not know in advance and it simply emerges by 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 with greater security and confidence along the path that your unconscious dictates. In that case, obviously, there is no use in speculating about how we should live. You will also know that you cannot know, just calmly do the next and most necessary thing.
“As long as you think you don’t know how to do it yet, you will have too much money to spend on useless speculation. But if you do the next and most necessary thing with conviction, you will always be doing something significant and foreseen by destiny.”
Look inside, plan outside
Jung was referring, among other things, to the need to look for answers within ourselves, instead of following the path pre-established by others. As Nietzsche also warned: “no one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.”
And for that, you need to trust yourself more, your instincts and your decisions. A coach or psychologist can help you see the path more clearly, of course. But only you can follow it and only you can know what is best for you.
Listen to others. Watch their path. Take note of their mistakes and successes. But be sure to chart your own path.
To achieve this, you need to connect with your deepest “self”, so that you can understand what you need at each stage of life. You will not always walk that path with a firm and determined step. Sometimes you will doubt and want to retrace your steps. But that is precisely what living is all about. Seeking answers in others is wanting to deny the uncertainty intrinsic to life, clinging to an illusory sense of control.
Living is taking one step at a time
Jung also offered another wise advice: take one step at a time. Many times life events overwhelm us and we feel completely disoriented in the face of the immensity of the task. In this state, we are particularly emotionally vulnerable and can grasp to anything to exorcise anguish and uncertainty.
Jung advises us to stop and ask ourselves what we should do next and go in that direction. The path will appear with each step we take. Ultimately, the first step doesn’t get you where you want to go, but it gets you out of where you are.
And how can you know what you should do? For Jung it was simple: we must pay more attention to the unconscious, which would translate into connecting more with our intuition.
It is, deep down, about doing more things that motivate us and make us feel alive. Do more things that make you feel like you. It won’t always be what makes you happy, but rather what you feel you have to do at every moment, authentically.
Take the time you need to identify the incongruent actions in your life (those that do not align with who you want to be) and recalibrate your steps. One of the first acts to organize one’s life is to recognize how much time you really have and analyze if you are investing it well.
The beauty of life as a process and reflective ordering is that we can act with confidence, according to what we are in this moment, making the most of this chapter, knowing that it will inevitably become another.
Living well is not doing all the things, but engaging fully in those things that align with our values and intentions. It is managing our time space well, without knowing for sure what is coming or if it will come, but honoring the present, so that what comes is better.
To live is to actively decide that, if we are lucky enough to read the next chapter, we can feel satisfied with what we did in the previous pages. No more, no less. And for that you don’t need any more instruction manual than your inner compass. “The life of each of us is limited to the present moment, and that is all we have,” as Marcus Aurelius said.
Source:
Jung, C.G. (2015) C.G. Jung Letters. Vol. I 1906-1950. New York: Routledge.
