Deconstructing a Story/Reconstructing a Life

Why do we wait until someone does something wrong to do something right with our lives?

I haven't figured this phenomenon out yet, but I see it happening all the time. Does it take being wronged to motivate us to transform something in ourselves? Or is it that we become complacent with ourselves and feel that so long as no one's bothering us, we can continue along our merry course? To what end and what destination? When we charted the course, did we really have an idea of where it would lead? Along the way, did we replace satisfaction for a real and authentically lived life? Whose definition of a satisfying life were we relying upon and for what purpose?

A week into co-habitation of my body with a bat tattoo, I'm thinking on all of these things. Before I jettisoned my Jungian analyst in favor of a bankruptcy free life, we'd been working on this quirky concept called individuation and what archetype was emerging in my life. They say in the second half of life, you get a calling from an archetype you've otherwise judiciously avoided in the first half. If you don't take up the call and integrate it, you won't be successful in your individuation process. While I don't have to be successful in all things, I take this one rather seriously because the consequences are said to be fairly dramatic if you don't. Accidents can happen, or even death for failure to integrate that archetype.

In the first half of my life, I vacillated between being something of a healer and sage. Being unable to avoid looking at this bat looking back at me, I'm reminded that he was undoubtedly the hero of the Cherokee story "How the Bat Got His Wings."

I was telling a friend recently that it's a Main family trait that we can face off with things that other people can't. We have a reputation, if not for starting trouble, definitely for finishing it. There are a great many of the Mains I'd count in my mind as heroes, and I am not one of them. I tell myself it's not been a lack of courage on my part, but in truth, I can't be sure.

I think in the first half of my life, what drew me to the healer and sage path was the recognition of a need in others and ability within myself. Along the way, however, I grew complacent, in that I was satisfied with having reached what I thought was a sufficient amount of personal growth. I had enough skill, training and experience to do the job right, so I settled.

What's wonderful about the universe is that just when you think you got there, some major chaos comes in to shake you right on out of the complacency tree where you were lounging. The Creator has other plans for you, so you'd better get a move on and make up for lost time!

I hate these chaos moments, by the way. They make me question everything I thought I knew until ultimately, there's no question left. It's as if I'm hanging upside down and all the questioning coin has slipped right from my pockets to the ground below my reach. Their glitter beckons, and of course I could hang there upside down staring at them all day and engaging in the intellectual self-flagellation of the "whys?"

But I won't.

If nothing else, hanging upside down in relation to my own life, much like a bat in its cave, gives me the opportunity for a new perspective. It doesn't matter that I became complacent along the line and settled for a satisfying life by someone else's standards. Really, what matters now is what I intend to do about it.

The chaos and the challenges of a life turned upside down ultimately are a gift. In the first half of my life, I responded to every gift I received with profound gratitude. Of late, I've balked and been surly, juvenile in my grand defiance of a calling. However, I think in that first half of life, I took the gratitude too far. I took it to the place of being grateful to the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Time and experience illuminated that for me, and I had a choice of being hurt and bitter, or embracing this as all a part of a design no longer mine and one that I might just envision as an adventure. I opted for the latter and am intrigued by what this new uncharted course will bring...