The Jung-Institut, winter semester, third week. A week until I go home... and that tangle that I often reach at this stage of the course, of irritation alternating with clarity.
Some lectures and workshops, and discussions and encounters and insights, are framed in vivid outline, or imbued with the aha! of treasured recognition. Others are confused, tangled, overlaid with minor irritations and a pathetic sense of embarrassment towards myself – muddles, in other words.
This is familiar and typical... but not always much fun. Predictable explanations: as an introvert (and yes, I am indeed a rather loud introvert, but nevertheless I am unquestionably an introvert) there is a point after a week, or two weeks, of six to eight to ten hours of daily interactions when I have simply had enough – enough of other people, enough of schedules and things to plan, enough, above all, of myself.
My own vanity bothers me only a little bit – I'm more exhausted and irritated by my (usually brief, but unpleasantly telling) flashes of aggression and judgmental rudeness. Of course most of us do that here at one point or another – but being away from university life means that such flashes can't be blamed on a general environment filled with the still-unformed emotions of twenty-year-olds; it's adults who are doing all this, which makes it all the more tiring. And there are the points where even packing lunch, drinking green tea to wake up, moving documents on the computer all start to seem maddening – repetition, fuss, and the low-level anxiety of getting ready each morning (virtually the definition of modern life of course).
It reminds me of generally miserable years working in a bank, working in an architecture firm, working in a corporate headhunter's office – but no, it's really quite different from those; the various working worlds where I spent too much time between 1978 and 1997 functioned at much lower emotional levels than this one, and included far less possibility for growing beyond from the confused noise of human complexes and inattentions. (Especially the headhunters – now those people were just nuts.)
So: I know this needs to be gone through – still tiring though.
Antonio and I were maundering on about whether or not we should even be doing this training – admittedly late on a Saturday night, on a train home, after a certain amount of prosecco and red wine. Since we both have other careers (he is a doctor), although we are attracted by this one, we are aware that it might trick us, turning into a disappointing everyday world of inanely repeated activities – an unpleasant possibility, after so much effort and money. Roberto was more sanguine, as he is a psychiatrist – the linear connection of what he already does with this training is more obvious; he has less of a sense of wandering through dark forests, without knowing whether there is another side to come out of, a clearing, or more open lands.
Oh well: we'll keep hacking away. Or, probably in some cases, we won't – but we'll get somewhere, eventually....
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