When I Was Jung: My Archetypal Journey

When I Was Jung: My Archetypal Journey

Chapter 1: Innocence

I was born an innocent. Like all new hatchlings, I enjoyed the total safety so crucial to expressive freedom. I cried as I felt, ate as I wanted, and did life with the discretion of a baboon. The brands that served me (as consumer) and my parents (as customers) all made their free, clear, and pure claims—how they were innocent of ulterior formulations.

Chapter 2: Exploration

Before long, I turned explorer. Soon as I could roll, the here and now felt limiting. I needed out. That. There. More. I covered new ground. My parents held a cabinet meeting; all went under lock and key. Hopeless, they turned to brands promising targeted, engaging exploration. They marketed products that help toddlers go the distance and discover childhood.

Chapter 3: Creativity

Experimentation was the next frontier. Little me donned my creator hat. Was I breaking things, or making new ones? That line remains blurry to this day. I put two and two together, without knowing how to count to four. I took things apart, leaving the fix to my elder siblings. As mom put it, “Some babies play with a ‘boomps.’” They create—a wreck.

Chapter 4: Jesting

With speech came clowning around. My hallmark jester streak started young, I’m told. In (other) words, I’ve been hunting punchlines for ages. The comic book brands and caricature toy makers laughed all the way to the bank. Years later, my grandmother, in her transplanted Hungarian grammar, would remind me that I had always been “a jokey man.”

Chapter 5: Heroics

If I’m honest, young me was more into heroics than heroism. Alas, brave antics are the male’s rite of passage. Companies effectively touted their bicycles, roller blades, Leathermans, and other weapons of individual destruction. True story, I accepted my brother’s dare and jumped out a second-story window. (Without a Freudian slip!) If I’m here to tell the tale, am I not a hero?

Chapter 6: Rebellion

When boy met strings. In early teenage, music pulled me in. It never led to tattoos or pickup lines, but it did amp up the “Let me go” bent inherent in pubescent hormones. I’d blast my chords late at night, lights and windows agape. Lucky for me, the rebel brands never quite got me; I remained a homeboy. Today I see my parents’ harmonious wisdom.

Chapter 7: Love

If music cracked a window, literature kicked in the door. I discovered my passion for communication not through craft, but through romance. The plots. The characters. The faraway lands. The misty air saturating the page. I can’t recall paying for many books, but publishers, poets, and copy-paper brands surely felt the trickle-down economics.

Chapter 8: Citizenship

Also known as, nine to five. An everyman working the everyday. Though, I was more fortunate than some: a friend knew someone who wanted a personal editor, which led to a full-time job with (plot twist!) no relation to writing. To fit into the workforce community, the literal white collar brands sold me more shirts and tie bars than I had days in the week.

Chapter 9: Leadership

Leaders aren’t born; they’re launched off the deep end. One day I woke to a new reality: I am a husband. I was suddenly expected to lead by example, earn a family living, and maintain a home’s decorum. (Ok, I confess, I also enjoyed maintaining the decor.) Gradually, with the help of inspiring, motivational resources, I learned the role model I wished to be.

Chapter 10: Wisdom

The greatest thing dad instilled in me was curiosity. A sage of outsize proportions, he encoded some of his voracity in my DNA. As a couple, my wife and I learned to travel the globe, sponging up everything we could about cultures, history, traditions, stories, and wayfinding. With how deeply it enriched my repertoire, I consider travel my creative mentor.

Chapter 11: Caregiving

With new life, my life came full circle. I became a father. Parenthood may equate archetypal caregiving, yet demands that I draw on all my other experiences and skills. That I put him before myself. That I make him the focus of this story. That I go back to the beginning, and see him as the innocent in this picture. Should I’ve called him Archie?

Chapter 12: Magic

“I feel like I’m sitting in front of a magician.” Sleep-deprived and delirious, I heard my client’s compliment with only half a heart. My other half was back home, thinking of the little magic bean who carries on my family name. Perhaps all the baby brands did a number on me. Maybe I’m drinking the Kool Aid. But doesn’t your firstborn initiate your greatest transformation?