SHADOW

    I spent a while the other morning sitting with my shadow.

    It’s a familiar concept. We all have our light side and our dark, our yin and yang, our animus and anima. Our masculine and feminine. Our polar opposites. We like to hide the shadow. It’s not something we’re proud of or want to share with other people. For myself, the part I like to show is the light side, the one who cares deeply about every other human being. The shadow is his opposite, the one who doesn’t give a toss about anyone but himself. The one who’s angry, hostile, selfish, inconsiderate, mean… The un-gentle Englishman.

    As I say, we mostly keep our shadow hidden from view, even—no especially—our own. But he or she does tend to pop out at inconvenient moments, most frequently when need arises to deflect the shadow that some other person is throwing at us, provoking our own to come out to play. Projection is one convenient word for it, a simple mechanism by which we react as though our shadow is not ours, but theirs. I point my finger: see what a nasty guy he is. It’s a neat trick of the mind. 

    I find it salutary to sit and watch the shadow from time to time. No use trying to expunge or exorcise it. Try losing your actual shadow when you’re standing out in the sun. In the human psyche, it’s embedded. Psychotherapy is one way to try to get rid of it, but no matter how well you can “understand” it or trace its origin—in childhood, say—sorry, you’re stuck with it. The best way to live with it, I have to remind myself again and again, is simply to be vigilant, to watch for the shadow when it resurfaces, when I find myself pointing the finger, likely getting angry or defensive, above all making judgments about other people: he’s so petty-minded, she’s so selfish, they’re so greedy. Which is exactly the time, I have to remind myself, to trot out the old mirror one more time and take a good look at what I see there.

    The other strategy is to make friends with that shadow side. You, “hypocrite lecteur,” as the French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in one of my favorite lines of all time, “mon semblable, mon frère.” You, reader, hypocrite, my mirror image and my brother. (Hideous translation, as are all translations of poetry. Better a live sparrow, though, than a stuffed eagle, as Edward FitzGerald wrote about his translation of Omar Khayyam…) I try to recognize that my “brother” is only trying to help by inserting himself in the situation and, instead of resisting, thank him and tell him: I don’t need your help right now.

    My shadow came out to play last week. It was an uncomfortable reunion, but good to see him again, shake his hand, and have some fun.