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REUNIONS: Is there value in remembering our younger selves? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Today, we're going to talk about reunions. And the reason
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: this topic came up is that I have just returned
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: from an undergraduate reunion this weekend. A bunch of us
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: went and traveled to upstate New York to meet at
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: the wonderful home of a friend of ours tucked in
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: the mountains. And I suppose maybe it's a fact that
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: we're all in our 60s. There was a deeper soulful.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: This is the class of 1925?
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: For that age. But no, this was... We all came
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: into the school in 1980. And it was, as it
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: has been, so impactful to me. And each several years
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: when we come together, there's a different tone that is
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: brought forward. There was something a little more soulful and
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: sober in some ways about this reunion. Some of us
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: were wondering if that's because we're in our 60s, but
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: we also were reflecting on who came to the reunion,
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: who didn't come, who's too anxious to come, why we
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: speculate that would be, why some of us are almost
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: euphoric to see each other again. And it brought up
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: just how remarkably complicated it is to return and to
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: gather together and sit in all of the different kinds
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: of memories that are evoked in each other's presence. So
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: today we just thought we would riff on reunions and
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: try to make a bit of sense about it.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: You know what comes up for me in this context
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: is our usual chat about asking people to support us
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: on Patreon. And so here I go with that, but
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about it in the context of reunion, that
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: we get emails from so many of you, and it's
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: wonderful to hear over and over again about listening to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the podcast, that we're a part of your life, means
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: something to you. And we feel a connection with all
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: of you out there very much. So in a way,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: this is a kind of weekly reunion. And if you
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: are a supporter on Patreon, thank you very, very much.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: You make it possible for us to do this independently.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: No strings attached to any sponsors. If you're not a
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Patreon patron, please join. please go on our website, thisunionlife.com,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: and click on the tab and help us keep going.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: So speaking of keep going, so all of us showing
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: up at these reunions in a sense to demonstrate we're
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: still alive and we're still going. We're still marching towards
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: some kind of inexorable goal. and stopping along the way
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: to wave at each other every several years.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, and we should just interject before I forget that
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Lisa is not reuning with us this week. She couldn't
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: be here. So Joseph and I are here with all
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: our flags waving for you. And I know you went
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: and sort of, did a little research on the word reunion.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: There's a lot just to unpack in that.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Yes. One of the things that I was interested in
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: terms of the etymology is there's two pieces to the
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: word reunion, and the first part is R-E. And there's
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: so many related words that have something to do with
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: the reunion. In my experience of the reunion this weekend, reunion, recover, redeem, resentment, redundant, redaction, relic, regret, remember, resentment,
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: that all of these tones are so much part of
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: this idea and the very basic meaning of that The
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: beginning of the word RE is to go back to
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: the original place. And another more subtle meaning for it
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: is the undoing of something. I really felt this, and
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: I felt it every year when I go back to
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: this Carnegie Mellon acting program. I'm able to, or the
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: context somehow undoes the decades that have transpired since the 1981.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: And I'm able to remember who I was when I
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: first arrived at the school and first laid eyes on
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: my classmates and just entered in with so much enthusiasm
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: and fantasy and unguarded innocence and hijinks and naivete. And
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: there's something about being with all of them that restores
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: the memory of who I was just as I walked
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: in the door. And there are very few environments that
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: can bring me back to that.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I love that you use the word remember. I'm literalizing
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: it of to reconnect, you know, sort of like reconnecting,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: remembering parts. And I can feel already how emotional this
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: topic is. I remember myself, too, when I go to
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: college reunions, that me, at age 18, walking in the door, oh,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: you know, Was I really ready for this? Was I
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: going to make it? What have I gotten myself into?
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: All comes flooding back. So it's a weird kind of
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: time travel that I remember who I was at age
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: 18 and 20 and 22 for those highly significant four
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: years in college. and of course there are all kinds
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: of reunions or family reunions or meeting up with a
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: lost love and having a reunion about, remember how in
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: love we were when we were in high school and
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: what happened, but there's something about a college reunion or
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: a high school reunion, uh, that carries a special tone.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: And of course you're just back from a reunion and, uh,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: So it's all very fresh.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Reconstituted in me in a very particular way. What I
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: was reflecting on, Deb, as you were speaking, is I'm
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: wondering if you could paint a picture of who you were.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: And we'll both do this. Who were you at 18?
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  Speaker 3: Who were you in the car as you're driving up
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: to unload your stuff into the dorm? Who was that Deb?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Well, of course, a very unconscious Deb because we all
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: are as teenagers. And that's who we are when we
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: go off to college as teens. Lots of high hopes
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: and so, so much naivete. we could select our courses.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: There was a week of orientation and getting ready and
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. I picked the craziest conglomeration of courses
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: you can possibly imagine. Things that I was utterly unsuited for.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I took a double course in Russian because I had
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: some idea that was doomed to fast failure. that I
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: was going to be a linguist in some way, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: that did not work out. I thought that taking astronomy
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: would teach me about the heavens and the stars. instead
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: of mathematical algorithms, so that didn't work out well. So
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: some of those kinds of idealistic, untethered to reality kind
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: of ideas about who I was just crashed and burned
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: pretty quickly. And so it takes me to identity. At
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: those ages, no matter what you're doing, who you are,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: what you're good at, is first and foremost in many,
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  Speaker 2: many ways. No, that's not how the world works. It's
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: not what astronomy is about. No, you're not going to
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: get good at Russian. Really hitting up against some reality
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: principles and Buckling down, I think, to the ordinariness of life.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Go to your classes. Read the books. Write the papers.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Just do the work.
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  Speaker 3: So we come in with all these high hopes, and
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: then we figure out we've been sent to the salt mines.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: And a very nice salt mine it was.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's a lot of who I... I was
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: at 18, very idealistic, encountering a reality principle and just
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: life itself.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: I think for me, there were so many strange things
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: I just carried into the dorm on day one. One
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: is that I'd had a very interesting and strange experience
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: of doing theater when I was in high school. This
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: was back in the 70s where school systems had an
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: enormous amount of money. One day in the past, they
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: had hired a troupe of professional actors that were all
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: living together in this fabulous 70s commune kind of way.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Their vision of developing theater education in young people It
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: involved yoga and meditation and knowing about your chakras and
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: archetypes and philosophy. And it was woven into this fantastic mysticism.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: And we were doing these kind of archetypal plays like
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: The Odyssey. And we loved it. I mean, it was
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: just a remarkable journey of kind of self-discovery and mutual support.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: It was fantastic. And I actually thought that's what it meant,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: a career in acting. I walked in with this total hippie, stoner,
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: love fest fantasy. And it was nothing like that. The
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: reality of being in a really competitive acting conservatory was
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: ruthless and brutal. And I think for the teachers that
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: had come out of particularly the live theater tradition in Manhattan,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: they were determined to orient us to the fierce, competitive,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: indifferent world of trying to get work as an actor.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: And I was totally unprepared. And it was just, it
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: was as if literally I'd just fallen off the, railing
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: of a cruise ship that just took off. No one
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: saw me and I'm treading water with no land in sight.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: So I luckily had a lot of native vitality and determination.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: I had a sense of my own agency. So I
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: really worked, just relentlessly worked and found that I was
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: so ill-suited to what was required and so naive about
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: what was required. My parents had not gone to college,
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: so nobody could help me make a decision as to
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: whether or not this was even a smart move. So
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: I actually transferred out of the program after a couple
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: of semesters and found a much better program for myself
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: and did well and had a good experience. And even
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: though those three semesters were so strange and stressful, something
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: about the bonding and the intensity and my expectation that
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: we would all be so close have etched thousands of
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: moments of those experiences in my mind with a depth
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: of feeling and clarity that I find uncanny. that I
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: cannot even explain. Yeah.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: It takes me to these stages of development where we're
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: suddenly open to learning language as toddlers. All of a sudden,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: we're ripe for learning language, and kids pick it up.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Of course, we help them and teach them, but all
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: of kinds of language capability just comes online when the
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: time is right. And the same thing for building friendships
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: in grade school and later. And I think those years
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: of 18 to 22, later adolescence, earlier adulthood, is a
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: time for tremendous capability for social learning, for bonding, for
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: initiatory experiences, whatever they are. And that's what I think
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: partly we're talking about is we hit college and it
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: was an initiation out of a certain kind of naivete
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: and innocence into get a grip what you thought would
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: be the right fit isn't the right fit. I'll tell
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: a story on myself. At the end of the first
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: semester in college, I was in deep doo-doo as far
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: as grades were concerned. And the dean called me and gulp.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: And she took a look. We talked and she looked
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: down at my transcript, my grades so far for the
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: first semester. And she said, hmm. She said, now let's
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: see if we can find something you can pass.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: You know, pragmatic.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Well, years later, I don't know, many years later, she
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: was at a college reunion and I told her that story.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm sure you don't remember, but I was
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: in your office and, and she said, oh my, you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: that sounds pretty harsh. And I said, no, it was
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: a wake up call. And she helped me. She put
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: me in some courses that indeed I could pass and
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: were a much better fit. So that's where we start, right?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: We're starting with our college experiences, looking for identity, creating bonds.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: And I have lifelong bonds with some of the people
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: I've gone to college with. We've followed each other and
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: seen each other through our whole lives so far. Our
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: whole lives.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Exactly. How many people... have we kept in touch with
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: for that many decades other than maybe childhood friends and
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: checked in with. But I like the model you were
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: using around development through that late adolescence into early adulthood,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: that something is also happening neurologically as we are structuring
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: the social self, as we're being introduced to our skills
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: or being introduced to failure for the first time.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: It gets woven in to a platform in the psyche,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: which we then stand on as we move forward to
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: whatever the next adult transition is. And I think particularly
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: for us in this conservatory program, it was very competitive
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: to get in. So all of us had done really
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: well in high school. And this really was an initiation
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: into ruthlessness and failure and reality. It was very painful,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: although for some reason, when I think of my cohorts
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: and when I see them, I'm just full of joy.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: I just adore them all. And I was asking myself,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: why is that how I hold it? Because a number
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: of our cohorts won't come to the reunions because the
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: memories of struggling and feeling so wounded during the process
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: or re-evoked when they see their cohorts. They manage these
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: distressing memories by not showing up. I was sitting down
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: with a couple of my friends and we were just
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: talking about that. Why do some of us want to
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: come back and some of us can't tolerate to revisit?
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: coming back?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you're touching on an important part of
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: all this, which is that a reunion evokes ambivalence. Right?
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: A part of me wants to go back and revisit. reconnect, reune.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: But another part might not for a whole lot of reasons. And,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: you know, something like if a person does not feel
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: he or she has done well enough in life, you know,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: looks remarkably different from how people might remember this person looking,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: who was maybe very introverted, shy, or, you know, a
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: bit of a wallflower. Will that person still feel excluded?
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Will we feel inadequate before some of our classmates that have,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: you know, done all these stellar sort of star-studded things
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: in the world with corner offices and whatever else, external
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: world signs of achievement? You know, and then on the
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: other hand, if I don't go, what am I missing
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: out on? But I think reunions evoke a lot of
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: of ambivalence. I knew somebody who declined to go to
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: the class reunion early on because she felt she hadn't, quote,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: done anything, unquote. And I'm remembering some of the early
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: reunions where, you know, it was very much what Jung
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: talks about as first stage of life, of you're out
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: in the world. You're doing stuff, trying things, experimenting, getting married,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: having a family, going back to school, getting a job,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: moving across the country, all the 500 things. And that
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of comparing notes of who was married,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: exchanging pictures of kids, and also sort of making your
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: way in the world. Very much the norm that you
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: had to be, quote, doing something. It could be an
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: important volunteer job. It could be a part-time job. It
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: could be going back to school. It could be working full-time.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: There were all kinds of things, but that was the
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: standard in those earlier reunions. What are you doing in
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: the world that matters?
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Which makes sense in that first stage of young adulthood
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: as well. We're all fighting to establish ourselves, and so
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: much of that can be this redirection. It's amazing to
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: me that we could even think that we could choose
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: a life direction at 17 years old or 16 years old,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: whatever we're putting in our applications. Decide what you're going
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: to do for the rest of your life. And we
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: come in with this fantasy that, ah, I'm going to
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: go to school for this, and then my life will
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: proceed forward in the declared declaration. And so coming in
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: in those first few years and reporting, reporting in.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That's exactly,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: that's a very, very good way to put it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: And what we've achieved or not achieved, depending on how
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: we want to be perceived, whether we want to be
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: an object of pathos or envy or anything in between.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: But I experienced in those earlier times that, yes, we
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: were all reporting in on what we had or were creating. Mm-hmm.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: But there was a tone in all of it of
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: trying to find the bridge between who we thought we
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: were going to be and who we actually were, even
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: just those first 10, 15 years later. And in the
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: storytelling with each other at these small gatherings, because it
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: was quite a small class, I think we were trying
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: to forge... some kind of bridge, some kind of meaning
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: between that innocent 18-year-olds that showed up and who we
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: were in each of these iterations.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: And so there might have been some bragging, although I
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: have to say that there really wasn't much of that,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: I don't think, in our group. But more than that,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: we were still trying to make sense of how did
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: I start out as an actor at that iteration, but
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Become an Alexandra technique teacher or become an architect or
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: become a mom full-time or many, many of the other
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: rich redirections of our lives. But somehow because we'd all
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: come together as an acting class, we were trying to
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: make sense to each other how that happened.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know that all of us, particularly early on,
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: had worked that hard to make sense of it.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: I agree. The feeling tone was not competitive of who
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: has outshone whom. Certainly, there was a tinge of that,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: but it was more about connection. Connection with peers and
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: kind of comparing notes of, you know, what are you
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: doing and One classmate was very, very creative about house
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: types of renovations and creating, I mean, incredibly creative, like
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: wallpapering a floor, you know, all kinds of stuff. But
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: what are you finding that lights you up? And what
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: holding the tension between kind of adhering to collective norms
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: for family life, marriage, kids, career, volunteer work, that kind
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: of thing, and expressing one's own individuality. So I think
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: there was a much more sense of just comparing notes
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: of how are you doing it? How are you doing it?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: And we couldn't name that tension between a kind of
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: conformity and connection with the world at large, you know,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: and our inner selves and our own sort of personal
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: individuation process, our own destiny. So I'm thinking about 10 years,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: 15 years out, that there was a decided shift of
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: what kind of sense are you making of your life now?
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And who are you now? We're not those 18-year-olds, and
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: we're not the ones five years out of college either,
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: still scrambling to find get a toehold and a foothold
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: and kind of haul ourselves up the rungs of the ladder.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: There was a shift. And I think that's a lot
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: of what colleges and other kinds of reunions are for.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: We're holding each other's stories and comparing notes. How are
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: you doing along your section of the road? How does
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: it compare with mine? What can we offer each other?
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: I'm right in line with that. And this reunion this
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: past weekend, all of us coming together in our 60s now,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: it was such a different vibe, you know, where many
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: of us are transitioning towards the end of the heroic journey,
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: towards the end of, you know, fighting forward.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great term. Say more about that, that
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the heroic journey that we go through.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I think certainly when we all showed up at
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: the first day at the conservatory, we were all merciful.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: We had seen the glimpse of the grail. Mom had
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: sewn us some clothes. We grabbed a horse from someone
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: or other. And we're setting off to have a grand
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: and glorious experience. And then Within the first semester, we
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: were up against it. Again, we were in the salt mines.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: And something that none of us really understood going in,
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: because I'm thinking maybe 45 or so of us had
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: gotten in, half the class would be cut after the
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: first semester. And then it would continue to be winnowed
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: down until about 10 or so people actually graduated senior year,
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: which none of us really knew that this guillotine was
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: set up in the middle of the administrative office. It
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: was an extraordinary thing. Many of us felt or even
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: still feel bitter about being subjected to that kind of reality,
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: but And I was as well, but coming back in
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: the last several years, all of that has really fallen away.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Maybe the grace of being a Jungian has helped me.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: That feeling of the guillotine being right there was actually
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: the confrontation with reality.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Were you guillotined?
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: Luckily, I was not. So I didn't have that particular wound.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: But at a certain point, I just knew The intensity
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: of this particular program was just so ferocious. It was
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: so brutal. What I needed, coming out of a home
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: with a lot of trauma and a kind of giddy anxiety,
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: being subject to that intensity of reality, that sink or swim,
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: we're throwing you off the cruise line and you've got
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: to figure out how to build a raft out of
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: kelp or something like that. It was beyond me and
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I knew it. And so really wonderfully, one of the
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: directing teachers I'd formed a bond with, he was very
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: supportive and he said, you know, you would do much
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: better at this BFA program at Catholic University outside of DC.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: It's a softer program and there's more of a holding,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: more of a value in the humanities in general. And
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: he was absolutely right. I felt just, wrapped up in
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: this wonderful, warm blanket. And I did much better because
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: that law of the jungle, nature, red in tooth and claw,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: it's a reality for sure. But I was ill-equipped for that.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: So I really had enough sense of self to go,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: I will translate myself. I will lift myself out of
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: this level of ferocity and find a kinder, gentler way world.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that the people at Carnegie Mellon from your
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: drama program are the people that you have a continuing
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: commonality with. They're the people you reunite with. That it
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: was such a formative experience for you that there's still
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: a connection.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: And they call those of us who kind of left
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: early the short-timers. So, of course, the people who continued
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: in the program had a much warmer kind of battle
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: fatigue that they all hold. So I'm thinking about all
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: the things that are reconvened during the reunion. So the
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: most pain-inducing teachers are the court comes back and is reconvened.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: And then there's always a certain sense of the reunion
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: that we are continuing the prosecution of the teachers that
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: just made our lives horribly miserable. And that's always been present,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: which I find now funny, used to be perhaps gratifying.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: But what I also see is that resentment that can
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: come forward when people reune is so painful and so
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: injurious after a certain point.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: You know, you're bringing up another aspect of reunions, of resentment, regret,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: all of these RE words. We call our colleges the
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: alma mater, which I think is all mother. But it's interesting,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: it evokes the maternal archetype. It's a holding environment. They're
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: often really nice campuses. It's sort of a halfway station
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: in many ways to adulthood that you're kind of on
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: your own, but you're part of a greater whole. And
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: that if we don't feel all mothered, supported, encouraged, helped
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: in some way, and if there's been unfairness, how it lingers.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: There's nothing like fairness to really spark things in people. Like,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I remember the time when, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: You know, you had that really tough experience of, at
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: a certain point in your program, people were either going
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: to proceed and be given permission to go on or
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: be cut. Whereas I had a very, I did have
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: a supportive experience. even from that dean that gave me
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: a very frank talking to that I absolutely deserved. Pretty
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: much meant to be helpful. Yeah. But, you know, the
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: college advisor that I had seen to pick those courses
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: had not been helpful or realistic. You know, he was
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: just sort of doing a pro forma task. But there
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: is something about being or feeling helpful that the adults
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: who could have, would have, should have known better and
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: weren't there at a time you needed it, that that
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: can linger very much and bring a spirit of resentment
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: and regret to a reunion, still wanting to settle that score.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: To retry the offenders. Yeah, to retry. But it brings
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: us to the reflecting.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: That reunions absolutely turn us onto and into is what
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: do we make of this experience? What have I learned since?
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: How do I process resentment or a sense of failure?
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: That brings us back, hoping that talking to people and
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: being back in that setting can help us move more
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: into ourselves.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: That would be the best case scenario that we get
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: to revisit, sometimes retry, sometimes see in our resentment, feel revulsion.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and regret.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, with people who were there. So we're like, ah, yeah,
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: that was really rough. It still begs the question, which
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I was holding, is how those of us who choose
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: to come together have somehow been able to either contain, transcend,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: metabolize some of those early wounds and return to something lovely.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: The first reunion I came back to, I was filled
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: with this unspeakable joy that all of the challenges, all
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: of the unexpected things bootcamp trials of all of it.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: And even the disappointment of learning, oh, this was imprudent
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: to be involved in this on my side. But all
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: of that fell away. And I still am flooded with
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: these singular memories of all of my cohorts. I have
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: a catalog of these images in my mind of each
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: of them at ecstatic moments. I don't know why my
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: psyche has decided to keep all of that to the
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: forefront and other things to the back. I also think
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: a big difference, let's say, between a high school reunion
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: and a college reunion is that, unfortunately, in high school,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: so much of the painful experiences are visited upon us
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: by the other students, where the students are mistreating students.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: So you're actually standing before these really difficult relationships. But
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: in college, really, it's the program and the faculty that
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: are visiting the developmental wounds and that the cohort group
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: are actually trying to support each other, trying to get through.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: And that's a fantastic inversion, which places the love closer
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: to those of us that muscled through it, at least
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: in my thinking.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: But you're bringing up for me the important orientation in
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: younger years to the external world. That in high school,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: one of our main jobs is forming peer relations. And
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: oh my goodness, I remember how competitive, fiercely, horribly competitive
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: I was. some of those high school relationships were. And
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: I was so sort of tangential socially that a lot
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: of it just sort of brushed by me. But there
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: was a lot of emphasis on conformity. And were you
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: the right kind of person? Did you have the right
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: kind of clothes? Were you too outgoing, too outspoken? Not enough,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: were you popular? Popular was very, that was hugely important.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: So it's a very external world oriented to how am
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I doing in the world of my peers and teachers
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: and so on? What do they think of me? Am
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: I misbehaving? the grade? Then you go to the next
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: stage of college and you're right. It's about the program.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: So it becomes more internalized of how am I passing
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: this class or not? Am I good at this? A
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: little more distanced but still externally oriented. And now when
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I go back, there's a parade where each class goes
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: and you can see your whole life going by you.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: The graduating class goes first and then the five-year reunion
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: class and the 10-year reunion class. Now I'm at the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: 900th reunion class. I'm one of the old people, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: the younger people line the path so that as you
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: walk down through, you see yourself getting younger and younger.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: But it's an internal journey now. It does not matter
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: who became a multimillionaire or drives a Lamborghini. I'm making
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: some fairly facetious associations here. It just does not matter.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Because my world is internal. The measuring stick is not,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: you know, do I get a good grade? Is there
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: a big fat paycheck? That's not the measure of a life.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: Right, that heroic part.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, the heroic journey is, yeah, it's not about that. And,
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: of course, Jung wrote about that so movingly. of the
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: end of his heroic stage of life. He had a
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: dream of Siegfried, who was a German hero, but especially
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: meaningful to Jung in his personal life through other relationships.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: And so he dreamt that he and this other man
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: were waiting in a dream for Siegfried to come riding
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: by And Siegfried did come riding by and they shot him.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: And Jung woke up from the dream and he was
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: just horrified that he had killed this hero who was
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: so good and so handsome and so heroic and so
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: beautiful for no reason in a dream. And a voice
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: said to him, you must understand this dream and you
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: must do so immediately or you'll have to kill yourself.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And Jung had a revolver in his pocket. bedside table.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: But of course, he didn't do that. He worked to
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: understand the dream. And what he realized was that his
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: identification with a heroic figure had to end. He had
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: to reorient to something that was not so egoic, something
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: so achievement-oriented, something so action-oriented in the world. to get
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: things done. And it led him to finding his inner center.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: And I think that is part of, you know, we
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: see our lives as we go back to reunion after
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: reunion and can trace the trajectory, especially with classmates, because
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: we're all on the same sort of lifetime timetable of
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: just aging and learning and What have you learned, really,
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: and how do we become wise?
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: That's a wonderful, wonderful framing. And I would say absolutely.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: That was very much the transition of this last reunion.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: We were sitting around a campfire, actually, for a long
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: part of it when the sun came down.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Eating s'mores?
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: No. We're too old and can't tolerate all the sugar
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: in the s'mores. So we're at that age. But sitting
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: there really quietly, talking so much more deeply. And yes,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: of course, there's hilarious stories and people want to pass
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: pictures around and gossip and that's lovely. But the quieter
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: stories of just grief, And no longer grief about our
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: experiences at college, which is really just being bruised by life,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: but the deeper grief of just moving in that last
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: third of one's life.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: And the grief of retrospecting. And many of my colleagues
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: had marvelous careers. They were on Broadway, and they were
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: in major films, and they really had the life that
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: they hoped for at 17 when they decided that they
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: would go to a conservatory, and looking back still and asking,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: was any of this what I thought it was going
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: to be? What has or hasn't it brought me? Am
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: I happy here and now as things begin to slightly
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: slow or very much slow? Have I forged something the
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: life that I want to rest in for whatever the
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: next 20 years that we have left or so. And
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: so the previous reunions had a giddiness to them, which
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: of course is lovely and we're all theater folks. So
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: like incredibly expressive and extroverted. And would anybody like to
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: turn that into a song right now? You know, spontaneously, uh, but,
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: but that, uh, heightened intensity, slowed down around the fire.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: And this more ponderous questions of where are our fallen comrades,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: literally who has passed away, who has fallen out of
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: the embrace of the reunifying memories, who has been unable
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: to transmute those early experiences of suffering, all the narcissistic
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: wounding that we all undergo as we adjust to reality?
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: And do we have a philosophy to hold that, to
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: hold it in our souls, to hold it together as
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: a group and stay emotionally open, stay interested and curious
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: about each other. And there is a lamentation. There was
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: a lamentation in the group, quiet, but a lamentation for
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: those who could have been there but would not come,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: who could not believe that perhaps that they would have
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: been supported, initiatic wounds that they and we all experienced.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: So I was talking with a buddy of mine from
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: that class that I'm just remarkably fond of. he was
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: asking how I came and have continued to come with
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: such enthusiasm to all of this. And I was trying
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: to explain it. He kept trying to frame it heroically
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: for me in some way, that I had some kind
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: of muscle to kind of march past the woundings that
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: we all had in the program. And I was finally
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: able to describe that And this is something that I
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: believe in terms of my therapeutic work around trauma, is that, yes,
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: we have to tell the stories of suffering. And we
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: come together and we retell the war stories and we
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: retell where we got this scar and the battle of
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: this or that that did this to my leg, cut
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: a toe off or something like that. We want to
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: review all of that. But I don't think we ever truly...
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: overcome a traumatic experience until we viscerally remember who we
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: were before it happened in a way that that is
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: alive in us again. And it's taken me many years
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: to understand that and to find parts of that myself
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: and to facilitate that for other people. But when I
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: show up, I am that boy in the room. the
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: unwounded boy whose arms are wide open and just full
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: of hope and connection. And I wish that for the
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: people that can't find their way back.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I think there is a lot in what
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: you've just said that's very important to finding our way
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: back to who we were before our innocence came. was
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: really challenged and attacked to find our way back to
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: that place of a kind of innocent wholeness. And what
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: do we do with all of the, you know, the assaults,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: the trials, tribulations, et cetera, of growing up, you know,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: whether we went to, whether that happened in college or
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: in the workplace or a thousand other ways, that there
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: is something about being able to reconnect with with a
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: sense of vitality, idealism, wholeness, goodness, as innocent and young
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: as it might have been, that also is sort of
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: that preview of the wholeness that we can hope to
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: reacquaint ourselves with and reune with when we're older. Of
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: that kind of continuation of there was a time When
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: I was young, but I had a wholeness. It's like
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: what you were mentioning before about the grail. Parsifal sees
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: the grail when he's young, but then it takes him
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: a whole lifetime to actually find the grail. And what
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: do we do with our wounds? I love the story
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: of Persephone. She was a maiden in a field picking
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: flowers with her friends. And unbeknownst to her, the gods
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: have decided that because Hades, the god of the underworld,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: fancies her, Zeus says, yeah, okay, if you really feel
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: that way, go for it. And Hades comes roaring up
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: out of the underworld with his chariot and black horses
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: and abducts her and takes her down into Hades, where
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: she spends some number of months until Her mother, Demeter,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: eventually succeeds in rescuing her. But what I think is
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: profound here is such a contrast between the daughter of
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: a goddess playing in a meadow, picking flowers with friends,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: and then being abducted in this absolutely brutal way and
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: brought below into the underworld. What do we do with that?
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: What do we do with that? And how do we
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: find another part of ourselves so that we come out wiser?
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: When she went into the underworld, she was kore, which
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: means maiden in Greek. When she is liberated and she
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: will return again half the year later, underground half the
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: year above ground. When she's released, that first time she
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: has become Persephone, and she is queen of the underworld.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: So she has really learned a lot. That is not nothing.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: I think that's a marvelous myth that I totally resonate
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: with and certainly saw In the reunion, we all see
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: as that transition from whatever the idyllic fantasy is into
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: the dark, unpredictable, wild, unconscious world and not knowing what's
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: going on and not being able to control the powers
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: that are suddenly affecting us. And to be able to
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: return for half the year. And the return might take
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: 30 years. The cycle of a winter and a spring
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: in the worlds of the gods could be an eon.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: But mostly I think reunions are really between you and
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: you or me and me and that capacity to be
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: curious and to be self-reflective and those external markers of
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: success don't matter. They give me a chance to remember
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: who I was and where I've been and to reflect
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: on that. And I think I go back with classmates
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: that we've known each other ever since, that it is
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: for all of us a kind of acceptance. We've had
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: a journey. Life has done things. It has tempered us.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: It has sorrowed us. We're grateful for it. It is
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: a very emotional chance to connect with ourselves and what
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: our life has meant. By going back to this unchanging place,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: the buildings are still there. it makes for such a
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: connection between past and present. And the only thing that
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: matters is, has my journey been authentic?
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: I'm so pleased with bringing in that archetypal dynamic. And
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: as you were ringing that bell, I was thinking about
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: the myth of Hephaestus, which seemed so relevant to this
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: particular experience where we've finally been accepted into the program
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: and it's as if we've been born standing before the Olympians.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. You belong. You made it.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: We've been invited forward. Hephaestus is born of Hera who
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: looks at him and says, you're wrong. You are not
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: good enough. You're not beautiful enough. hairy, your legs don't
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: look right, you don't sound right. You are substandard. And Hera,
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: in this sense of disgust, hurls Hephaestus out of Olympus.
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: And I think in one of the stories, he falls
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: for days and days until he strikes the earth. And
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: because he is born of the gods and has his
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: own holiness, he forges a life in the earth and
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: becomes the master craftsman. And of all the gods, he
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: is the most innovative, creates the most beautiful objects, creates
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: Zeus's thunderbolts, creates all the magical inventions quietly. laboring at
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: his forge with his own profound sense of imagination and
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: is resentful. There's a story where he tricks his mother,
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: locking her into a magical throne that vaults her helplessly
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: into the air just to really get back at her
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: for being so cruel to him.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: Nothing like re-venge.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: Revenge, exactly. Exactly. And he makes some bad choices. He
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: marries Aphrodite, which is a disaster. That's not going to
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: go well. But finally, apparently, towards the end of that story,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: he really accepts himself. And he marries one of the graces.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: And she brings harmony into his world and beneficence and graciousness.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: He becomes one of the helpful gods that one can
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: go to where life is hammered out and solutions are found.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: It's not glorious and it's not happening on Mount Olympus.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: That has been the story for so many of us
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: who did not ascend to these fantastical performing arts realms,
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: but we became contractors and psychoanalysts and everything in between
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: that we all, many of us, took on the role
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: of Hephaestus at a forge and felt cast out of
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: the industry of this or that. And when I listen
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: to myself and I listen to my fellow Hephaestian craftspeople,
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: life is good. And from that perspective, Remembering each other
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: in those wonderful Icarus moments right at the beginning. You
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: show up and you first see those set of wings
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: and you're like, that's for me, man. It's going to
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: be great. But to remember just that first moment before
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: everything changes is enough. There's a wonderful old saying, enough
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: is a feast.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: That's really nice. I'm really also tracking the common theme
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: in the myth of Hephaestus and the myth of Persephone,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: that we will be cast down. There will be disappointment.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: People will tell us that we don't measure up or
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: just the old shit happens. And then we are challenged
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: to make something of it, but we become ordinary. And
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: in our ordinariness, we can be extraordinary, which I think
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: is the image of Hephaestus' incredible creativity and Persephone's dark power.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: But there's something about coming down to Earth and finding
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: something in ourselves, that that is enough. That's what you've
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: been given. That's who you are. That's what you have.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: These are the constraints that your life has given you.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: It could be all kinds of, let's say, a health issue.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: It could be difficulties with families, a child who needs
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: a lot of care, All kinds of things happen to us,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: and then we have ourselves to work with. What are
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: we going to do with this thing called our life?
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Well, some small number of us, which we all enjoy vicariously,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: really have had big careers, or even now very much
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: in the public spotlight, big stars. And those of us
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: that keep just even a little contact with them No
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: one escapes suffering. Yeah. And even those whose wings didn't
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: melt and they didn't fall out of the sky, it's
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: still hard. It's still hard to be human. It's hard
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: to be human in Mount Olympus. It's hard to be
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: human when you're cast out. It's hard to be human
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: in the underworld. And that to be able to suffer
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: our fate with some support of grace, and goodwill, and curiosity. Endless,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: endless amounts of curiosity. And so to sit around that
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: campfire and to feel that enough is a feast. We've
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: had enough. We've all received enough.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: And there's something about the support and the goodwill and
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: the understanding of classmates, especially now in later years, in
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: mine or later than yours, of just We get it.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: We've all been tempered. We've all had lives. There's no comparing,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: no judgment, none of that anymore. But there is a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: real depth of intimacy and camaraderie, acceptance and understanding from
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: the people who also remember how we all were, You know,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: when we got there at 18, full of high hopes
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: and very little in the way of life experience, much
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: less judgment. So we've seen each other through, and there
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: is such a tremendous amount of goodwill. Thinking about, you know,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: how supportive I am of people going to reunions. And
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: I know we've talked mostly about school reunions. I think
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: family reunions are a different order.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: Even more complicated in a lot of ways. All the ghosts.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Yes. But I think going back to a school reunion
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: and maybe other kinds of reunions is a test of
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: one's own self-acceptance. This is who I am. This is
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: where I've been. I'm glad to see you. I'd like
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: to hear your story. I hope you'll hear mine.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: And just as a rally here as we transition into
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: a dream, I'll read just the last stanza of a
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: poem called Ulysses by Lord Tennyson. Though much is taken,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: much abides. And though we are not now that strength
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: we are, We are one equal temper of heroic hearts
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: And so, in a moment, we'll transition to working on
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: a dream. And before we do that, I would like
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: to invite all of the listeners to take a look
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: at our Dream School. So even if you were to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: just right now scroll to the bottom of the page
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: on your app, you'll see a link for Dream School.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: If you tap that, it'll open to a page that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: describes our 12-module program. And our goal is to empower
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: and educate and support any of you want to learn
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: in a structured way how to understand your dreams, how
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: to make a deeper meaning of that, and through that,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: forge a relationship to that wise center that speaks to
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: us in our dreams through synchronicities, sometimes through the chance
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: gathering of friends after many years, that there is a
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: secret symbolic language that our unconscious is using to help us,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: always to help us. And Dream School is one way
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: to really take our dreams seriously, really learn how to
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: hear the message and to invite the positive and medicinal
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: effects of dreams so that our journey deepens, so that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: our suffering is reduced. so that our insight and the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: magnitude of our understanding can grow. So, take a moment, please,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: and just click on Dream School. Take a look at
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: the page, read it, feel free to email us with
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: any questions, and if it fits, we hope to see
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: you there.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: So, this week's dream is from a man who's 34
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: years old, and he works as a high school English teacher,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: and so did I once upon a time. Here's the dream.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: I am back at college for a reunion. On a
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: tour of one of the new gardens, I managed to
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: pluck three ripe tomatoes from the vine rather surreptitiously. They
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: were red, juicy, and only just beginning to wrinkle. Rubbing
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: them clean on my shirt, I was worried that I
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: might get caught before I began popping them in my
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: mouth one by one. Then I was on my own.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: I decided to climb the steps into my old social club,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: and as I passed people going the other way, I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: felt judged, their eyes scrutinizing me on their descent. Inside,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: there were three main stations, a dance station where people
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: were doing the Macarena, an athletic station with adventurous water sports,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: and finally a game station where people in face paint
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: were playing a tribal version of Twister. Each station terrified
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: me in its own way that I would have no
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: dance moves, hurt myself, or not know the rules of
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: the game respectively, and I felt I belonged nowhere. I
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: circled the room once, surveying my options and trying not
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: to be noticed. I felt for the tomato in my pocket,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: rubbing it like a talisman. I decided to leave, but
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: just as I was on my way out, the apparent
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: leader of the tribal twister game wore paint on his face,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: hair high in a ceremonial updo, made intense eye contact
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: with me. His eyes seemed to say, I see you.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: I see who you really are. Then I woke up.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: And for context, our dreamer says, I'm in the process
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: of transitioning to a new career. I'm living alone for
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: the first time in a new city and quite socially isolated.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: The main feelings in the dream, he reports, were feeling lonely, scared,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: out of place, and false. And for additional explanation, he says,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: my ex-girlfriend's father, who called himself my future father-in-law, grew
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: various kinds of tomatoes in his yard that my dogs
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: were always threatening to get into.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: What a wonderful, wonderful dream, and fits so beautifully into
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: these ideas of initiation and threshold.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: The undone work that we have left behind and we're
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: still perhaps ambivalent about whether or not we want to
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: take it on so I'm struck that the tour begins
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: in a garden he plucks three ripe tomatoes there are
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: also three stations that he is going to visit and
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: he is circling the room. So there's something very magical
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: and initiatic right from the beginning. One thing I just
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: want to evoke is something about the Garden of Eden.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: The red object is plucked and eaten. The knowledge of
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: the tree of good and evil or discernment or the
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: tree of consciousness or the capacity to know wisdom. And
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: in some anthropologic considerations, there's some debate as to whether
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: or not it is an apple or a tomato, as
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: they're describing a red fruit that's plucked and eaten.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: And I'm remembering that tomatoes and the redness signify, of course,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: they just signify desire and love, of that there is
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: something very tactilely appealing about tomatoes, isn't there?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: I think so, and those little cherry tomatoes that you
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: can now pop in your mouth, they're delicious and sweet.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: That's the image that I have of these tomatoes that
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: he plucked, is that they're small enough to be able
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: to be popped and be delicious.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: So they're red and juicy, and they're perfectly ripe. Yep.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: He's worried that he's going to get caught before he
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: pops them in his mouth, but he wants to. He's
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: found something at the college reunion that he'd like to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: take a bite out of. But there's some anxiety there.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: And then that same paradigm of being offered these fruits, dancing, athleticism, adventurousness,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: where again, the fruit is offered, but he's just terrified.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: The word terrified comes twice. Each station terrified me And
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: then he's afraid that he might get caught for popping
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: it in his mouth.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: This dream has scenes, doesn't it?
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: This is such a well-organized dream. So scene one is
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: back at college for the reunion and snitching these three tomatoes.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: You know, and in fairy tales, it's always, you know,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: we always say third time's a charm. Try it once.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: Doesn't work. Try twice. It doesn't work. Third time, it works,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: and it leads to the fourth thing. Hopefully, you get
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: the treasure. You retrieve the sword from out of the stone.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: You find the woman in the inner sanctum of the castle.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: But here, we just have three. We don't have the fourth.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: But he feels, the dream ego feels, that he's done
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: something dishonest. and is worried and feels guilty. I'm worried
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: I might get caught. So he's doing something that he
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: feels is illicit. And then scene two is going up
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: to the social club. Now it's interesting, he has to
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: climb up the stairs to the social club and he
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: passes other people on the other way. They're descending and
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: he feels judged. So he's guilty. And then comes up
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: the feeling of inadequacy, that these three stations exist to
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: dance the Macarena, the water sports station, and then this
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: twister station. And he feels inadequate to participate, that he
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have the dance moves, he'd hurt himself, not be
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: able to play the game. So he's once again isolated
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: and out. And then he goes back in the third scene.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: He feels for the tomato in his pocket. And then
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: this tribal twister game leader with war paint on his
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: face and his wild hairdo seems to see right through him.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: as basically the implication is as an imposter, as a fake.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: But we've circled back around to this tomato that is
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: a talisman for what could be.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: I think you outlined it just really beautifully and really
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: clarifying the transitions in the dream. And then this marvelous
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: potential that there is this mythic figure in some ways.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: who is able to see who he really is. What's
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: nice about that last eye contact is he doesn't suggest
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: that that's necessarily a positive or negative event, but he's
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: spending so much time trying not to be noticed, spending
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: so much time being avoidant of making contact. And then finally,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: something in the unconscious says, at least through the eyes,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: insists on contact. some form of recognition.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: You know, I think you've really hit on something important,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: that our dream ego is avoidant. He snitches the tomatoes.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: You know, he goes into the room where all these
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: activities take place, but he doesn't participate. He's afraid of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: being found out. And at the end, he is. Someone
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: sees him. And it's this guy playing Twister, which, you know,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: help me out here because, but isn't that where you
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: take all these strange body postures and try to wriggle
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: around and.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Try not to fall as you're putting your hands and
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: feet on these different colored squares. Yeah. And it's a
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: male initiation. This is a fellow in war paint and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: ceremonial clothing. Yeah. Because it seems that he's... He seems
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: very young in the dream. I don't have the dance moves.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: I might hurt myself. I might embarrass myself.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to play the game. Yeah. And
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: as he's needing to strike out and transition into a
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: new career, he needs some muscularity.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: And a bit of adventurousness in him.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: Little tribal twister leader, ceremonial war paint.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: The inner masculinity.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: Right, that wild, instinctual man. It reminds me of the
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: Robert Bly story.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: Iron John?
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. Where Iron John is about a young
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: boy who is a prince, the king's son. His father,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: the king, has imprisoned Iron John, a great, big, red-haired,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: shaggy man, a real beast of a man. in a
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: cage in the courtyard of the palace. And the young
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: prince frees Iron John who they've then run off into
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: the woods together. And Iron John really initiates the prince
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: into his own version of masculinity. And I'm thinking of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: this twister painted up ceremonial leader as something like that,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: a kind of natural, instinctual man who's not afraid to
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: play the game. And I'm thinking from the context that
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: our dreamer supplied, maybe reading more into it than is
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: really there, but he says, my ex-girlfriend's father who called
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: himself my future father-in-law, various kinds of tomatoes in his yard. So, yeah.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: Now our dreamer is in a different career. This relationship
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: is over. But I'm wondering about tomatoes as a talisman
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: of the kind of redness and virility and abundance that
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: signifies energy for life, like the alchemical rubato.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: That makes great sense. I'm thinking about Jung's Five Instincts.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: And one of the instincts is hunger. But by hunger,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: he means being clearly attuned to what you need, the
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: fundamental needs. And so when we are clear about what
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: we need, there is a sense of agency and maybe
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: even a little entitlement. There's three tomatoes. I want those tomatoes.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: And I pluck those tomatoes. It's not a horribly transgressive.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: Although there are plenty of stories where the peasant boy
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: climbs into the king's orchard and nips a pear or
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: something like that and there's hellfire. to pay for it.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: But it starts the adventure, is that he's seen something,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: he wants it. We don't even know if it's disallowed, frankly.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: It's not like there's a big sign that says, do
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: not pick the tomatoes. But he has to at least
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: break some kind of internal rules. has to transgress something
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: inside of himself to even have permission to just take
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: three tiny little delicious possibilities out and even want them
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: in his mouth. And what I would suggest is that
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: the athletic station with the adventurous water sports is one tomato.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: The dance station is another. The game station is another.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: that the three opportunities are outward expressions of the three tomatoes,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: and as such, they all represent something to do with
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: the sensate function. And what I would imagine that this fellow,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: even as the high school English teacher, is probably an
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: intuitive feeling type, as many people who go into the
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: humanities are, which means that The thinking function and the
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: sensate function, particularly the third or fourth function, are just
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: less developed. Naturally, through no fault, it's just not the priority.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: But here at midlife, he's 34. There's something in the
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: dream maker that's highlighting this physicality. And Twister, which is
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: certainly not going to injure most people, but it's very
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: physical and there's a lot of contact and you're leaning
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: over and on top of people. Then of course the
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: water sports and a dance station. It's all about things
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: that bodies do. And so the initiation and the eating
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: of the three tomatoes may have something to do with
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: his physicality and much like in the Garden of Eden
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: that Adam and Eve eat of the red fruit and
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: suddenly notice that their bodies are naked. I mean, it's
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: not like, oh my God, our heads are naked and
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: they show up wearing fig leaf hats because they're embarrassed
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: about their thoughts or something. But this awkward body that
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: we're walking around in and these genitals, we've got to
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: hide something about ourselves. So there's an opportunity. It hasn't happened.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: But you can see that the unconscious is setting up
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: a stage. ceremonial stage, as you were alluding to, Deb,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: where he's seen, he's acknowledged, and there's all kinds of
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: wonderful fantasies that don't happen. This might be the curtain
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: comes down and this is act one. And the curtain
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: comes up and we're wondering if the dreamer is suddenly
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: in a game of Twister or you know, badly dancing
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: the Macarena, but doing it anyway.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, right. None of these things is actually dangerous. I mean,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: what was the worst that could possibly happen to you
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: dancing the Macarena? Well, you look like a stumble bum.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: Water sports are not inherently dangerous.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: You're going to fall off the jet ski into the water.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, again, that's, and the same thing with Twister.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: you'll fall over or you'll crash into the person you're
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: competing with or playing with. So there's something about a
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: real hesitation. And you mentioned the possibility of a kind
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: of avoidance of getting into the rough and tumble of life.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: But I like at the end that he has that tomato.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: That that's the telos of the dream is going for
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: the tomatoes and his future father-in-law at that at a
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: time had an abundance of this had a whole garden
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: full of it and the dreamer says my dogs are
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: always threatening to get into the yard and and basically
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: um violate the tomatoes this bumper crop of goodness and
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: redness i'm content to leave our dreamer holding on to
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: that tomato and i hope.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: He eats it i do too i hope he uh
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: Pops that right in his mouth. Yes, and it's delicious.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: That's right. And if you have to turn away and
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: hide in the closet, but at least get that tomato
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: in your mouth.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: Get some of that goodness in there. And even that
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: wonderful scene where in the real life, the dogs were
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: always threatening to get into the tomatoes. One of the
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: wonderful ways that we can open up our imagination is
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: to take a memory like that and ask ourselves, well,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: if that was a dream, if I dreamt, My dogs
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: were just constantly trying to break into father-in-law's tomato patch
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: and what they were trying to do, which is that
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: all of this instinct wants to get to the tomatoes.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: And just like the dogs, he nabbed them when they
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: were in reach. So that part of him, that just
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: healthy instinct, trying to go to the abundance, which I
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: think you were leaning towards, Deb, is right there.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, go for it.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:24:40
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• 1:24:51
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• 1:24:54
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• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.