just damn unlucky is all

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” This is a quote posted widely across social media and attributed to Carl Gustav Jung – bespectacled, an impish, wise grin, old man wisdom smoking his old man wisdom pipe and looking quite approachable – though the quote is frustratingly never given with any direct citation to any of his Collected Works. This is certainly like something Jung would’ve said, but did he say it? Or do we simply wish that he said it, as if this will somehow make us feel better? When I first noticed this quote, it struck me as fortuitous. I bought the line that it had come from that same face in the photo. Certainly I had been caught again in what seemed the grip of a larger force, unable to act in ways in which I’d hoped, reliving certain very familiar patterns over and over, seemingly endlessly, as if nothing else were possible, as if there could never be another outcome than what I again found myself facing, as if there were a deep point to be made by this, perhaps from my own soul. It said: This is the limit of your life, as it is prescribed, and no progress beyond this will be allowed. But where was my responsibility in this dilemma? Had I put this limitation on myself, at some unconscious level? It was hardly the first time I’d asked myself this question, never to receive a definitive answer from any quarter. At this level – that of the conscious self – whether decreed by the unconscious or by a larger fate or fates, I might as well simply say I’m… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com