The Human Shadow

Have you ever tried to cage a wild animal? I know Guinea Pigs don’t conjure up visions of wild, fierce, untamed beasts, but work with me here. . .

Over the weekend a friend asked me to pet-sit her guinea pig. I was to pick him up from her garage and transport him in a small cage back to my house.  When I arrived, it was clear that this fast and feisty rascal was master of his domain. This guinea pig (we’ll call him Sam to protect his anonymity) roamed freely and had no interest in being caught, let alone put in a small carrier. He was enjoying himself too much. On all fours I tried to chase, coax, trick and bribe Sam in order to catch him. Finally with only a carrot for arsenal, I grabbed him.  He fought me tooth and nail (and I mean that quite literally) refusing to be caged. Finally, after a dramatic struggle between man and beast, I was able to get him safely inside the cage and quickly close the small door.

Sam got quiet on the thirty-minute ride home. Was he sulking? Giving me the cold shoulder? Was he being passive aggressive in a rodent-like way? Finally home,

I placed the cage in my empty garage, opened the little cage door and with arms wide open, declared, “You’re free!” He lay still in the back corner of his prison cell refusing to leave. I put my hand in to lift him gingerly out of this isolation chamber and on to the floor. But Sam would have nothing to do with it. With every attempt to get him out, he dodged my grasp. Giving up, I sat on the floor in front of the cage. I thought…. I get it, Sam. You’re just like me. Well, parts of me…

We all have that isolated creature hiding in the cage of our discarded selves. In fact it seems we spend the first half of our lives deciding what parts of ourselves to put into the cage and then the next half of our lives trying to coax them back out. Of course Carl Jung brilliantly described this as the “human shadow.” We’re born whole. But over the course of our childhood, we learn to hide pieces of ourselves. The parts our parents look at disapprovingly. By the time we get into High School and have had a multitude of relationships, even more pieces of ourselves are caged.

Somewhere in our fourth or fifth decade, after a great many life experiences, we’re ready to start opening our cage and trying to retrieve what we’ve been hiding all these years. We discover that the pieces of ourselves we’ve kept hidden, unattended to in the cage haven’t evolved like the rest of us has. In the dark, these shadow pieces have regressed; they’ve become primitive and sometimes hostile to the person who finally opens that cage. They’re angry. Beaten down. And who can blame them?

I thought about what I have held prisoner in my own cage. I thought about how impatient I can be to recover those pieces of me and bring them back into the light where I now understand they belong and have their place. I realized I couldn’t just drag them out of isolation and expect them to run free. It takes time. It takes love and it takes patience. With this newfound insight, instead of forcing Sam through the narrow door of the cage, I disassembled the cage around him. I breathed deeply with the knowledge that he needed space and he would come out when he was ready.