Thoughts of the day
Continuing with my favourite ideas from 2021, perhaps the most intriguing and valuable to me has been the notion that ‘you have what you want’.
The sentence might be echoing determinism, but in reality, it traces itself back to Jung’s shadow self. We may always have different selves at play, but the self that wins is the self that, ultimately, wants something the most. And so, the outcome of all our life’s conflict becomes something to accept, thus helping us cherish where we are today, instead of lamenting about what could have been.
But perhaps to push this a little further, we should also be armed with self-knowledge, so that we know whose wants we are actually caving into, in order to be happier with the choices we actually make. To start with knowing what we want, and then to build our life around that. To be able to recognise when what we want changes. But also, to have a little bit of blind faith in our subconscious workings, trusting that they are on our side.
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